Sneakerhead Theatre Of The Absurd: A Bootleg of a Bootleg Nike and The Return of the Upside Down Swoosh

Things are getting weird out there…

Raff’s vintage sneakers compared with Maden ‘Fake Series’ retro upside down swoosh sneakers.

Here at the Deffest blog we’re all about a groundbreaking post and we think this might be a new milestone in sneaker history - the first time we’ve ever seen a bootleg of a bootleg. This post was brought to you by the power of Google’s Lens tool. We recently picked up and reviewed the vintage sneaker book by Mikiji Nagai’s called C-Class sneaker collection. The joy of collecting.’ While we were researching that book we used Google Lens to find more information on it we came across this link to a brand called ‘Maden Wear’ series of sneakers called the ‘Fake Series’ and donning another upside down Nike swoosh. See photos below:

As best as we can tell what happened here is that a factory purchased the Mikiji Nagai book then went rogue and began making knock offs of the sneakers in the book, shockingly including a copy of Raff’s brand 1970’s upside down swoosh Nike bootleg. There is no tongue or heel label on these shoes outside of the footbed which says Maden C-CLASS sneaker. Just to be clear we are not promoting these sneakers but merely reporting on it. The sneakers in the photos above are low quality construction and an overall poor design. We’d much rather have the OG Raff’s or some proper 1970’s old school Nike runners. One last note - we reached out to Mikiji Nagai for a comment but did not hear back.

Super brand vintage sneakers

Hey Y'all - we're looking for a needle in a haystack and figured this is a small community of vintage collectors who might have come across a pair of these. Putting up this post to see if anyone else out there has a pair of 'SUPER' branded vintage running shoes from the late 70's or early 80's. The first photo is a pair that we own and the second is from the excellent @somashimokitazawa website. If you have the black pair or others please DM us. Black sneakers image credit to @somashimokitazawa.

Super sneakers image credit to @somashimokitazawa.

Four Stripe Legends: Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Awhile back we put up a post on rocker Neil Young wearing 4 stripe sneakers. I saw recently on The Dale Earnhardt Archive twitter account that NASCAR racing legend Dale Earnhardt Sr. also wore some awesome 4 stripe Kinney NBA shoes between 1979 - 1981. Here’s a couple of photos and the ad for the Kinney NBA shoes below.

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There’s another photo from Getty images in 1981 where Dale was wearing the opposite blue and yellow Kinney NBA runners.