When photo’s of these samples surfaced on the internet in 97, the sneaker community went buckwild and so did the streets. I remember being in gym class my senior year of highschool in fall of 1998 and my friend nudges me. Without saying a word, he points to the guys feet standing next to me. I look down and what do I see? The original grey toes?! Couldn’t be I thought. First, looking at the person wearing them was enough to raise suspicion but aside from that, the fact they never released to that point and samples were hard as hell to come by, I figured something was up. I asked the guy where he got his pair and he politely responded “Busy Bee Mall.” The very next day my friend and I headed over to the mall to see where in the hell these things could possibly be and nearly fell over in laughter as we arrived at the store location. They were grey toes alright, but not Brand Jordan. This was our first “meet and greet” with “AIR Brand” sneakers. Your probably asking how we made that mistake, well, we hadn’t really inspected the shoes on the guys feet, all we saw was the front of the shoe (his pants were covering the heel). If he was wearing shorts we would have seen there was no Jumpman hologram rather just the word “AIR” in some cheap looking font under the plastic cover. The icing on the cake you ask? While inspecting this grey toe knockoffs in my hand, the lady running this store/booth comes over to us and tells my friend and I with pride that “we don’t have any more of those their sold out!” We couldn’t even hold back, I put down the shoe and my friend and I almost fell down from laughing so hard. That was the first time we had encountered fake sneakers, little did we know just how huge that industry would become (but thats for another article) In 2005 Brand Jordan gave everyone a taste of the OG sample with the Grey toes, but a different shade of red was used and the grey did not go up the tongue. With a true release of these gems yet to drop some 14 years later, one can only hope to one day have these beauties on your feet (for all you size 9’s out there you have the opportunity to beat all of us to the punch as samples show up on eBay every now and then). Take a trip back below!
