Solved Sneakerhead Mysteries: Eddie Van Halen's 'W' sneakers

Nearly a year ago we put up a post on Eddie Van Halen’s mystery velcro ‘W’ branded sneakers and went down the rabbit hole on this one for awhile trying to find out what sneaker brand he was wearing. We’re glad to announce today that Van Halen fan Allen Garber has figured it out and it turns out that he was wearing Payless Shoes Pro-Wings brand sneakers. We have posted a pair of vintage Pro-Wings where you can see the similarities in the tongue label logo to the photo below. As far as the ‘W’ logo goes this must have only lasted for a short time in Pro-Wings history during the late 1970’s. According to Allen Eddie apparently wore this same pair of sneakers from late 1979 through at least 1984. Big shout out, all credit and a huge thank you to Van Halen fan Allen Garber who solved this mystery and passed along the information and photos.

Eddie Van Halen Frankenstrat W Logo Pro-Wings Sneakers

Btw you can see Eddie wearing these W sneakers in this 1980 performance of ‘You Really Got Me.’ Here’s another video from the same performance with the W sneakers.

One last note - we want to wish Diamond David Lee Roth the best in retirement. He is one of the greatest showmen in Rock N’ Roll history.

Eddie Van Halen's 1970's 'W' logo sneakers

October 2021 UPDATE: This mystery has been solved. The W logo sneakers below are Pro-Wings brand. Thanks again to =VH= fan Allen Garber who figured this out.

I have received a ton of emails and messages asking about these Eddie Van Halen W logo sneakers in the photo by Neil Zlozower below so I figured I ought to put up a post about them. A few of us have looked into these sneakers and brand for awhile and we have had a couple of leads but no official confirmation.

Image Credit: Eddie Van Halen photo by Neil Zlozower. You can buy prints from Neil’s website here.

My first best guess was vintage Weider Sport Shoes. There is a pair of these up on eBay right now here

Weider sport shoes W logo sneakers. Image credit to ebay.

The W logo on those is not as pointy as Eddie Van Halen’s sneakers so we pretty much ruled them out. Next up we were trying to figure out if a factory was bootlegging Mizuno’s old M logo and flipped it upside down like Kinney shoes did with the Nike swoosh back in the day.

Mizuno MR1 - Image credit to tokyosports.com.hk

But that theory proved to be wrong as the logos are still a mismatch.

The latest development as we were told from a friend on Instagram is that these are 1970’s Kmart brand sneakers, possibly Trax brand. Kmart used a bunch of different profile logos back in the day which you can see here. We have not spotted the W logo yet but are trying to find an old ad for it. Once we find it we’ll update this post.

A couple of final thoughts - first off, big shout out to rock n’ roll photographer Neil Zlozower for capturing these iconic photos of Van Halen. You can buy Van Halen and other great rock band prints from Neil’s website here. 🤘🤘

Finally, RIP to rock n’ roll legend Eddie Van Halen. The man was a one-of-a-kind shredder and Van Halen made some killer albums together.