FRESH OUTDA BOX: Zoom KD III

In this edition of FRESH OUTDA BOX or FOB for short, I take a first look at the Zoom KD III Christmas edition.

Pikachu, I choose you!

At 70 bucks a pair, these are the most wallet-friendly signature sneakers you can find in the market, not to mention whose signature these bear although Kevin Durant's actual John Hancock is no where to be found on the shoe.

Entering his 4th season, this is only KD's third signature shoe. I believe Nike and KD has an agreement to keep his shoes at an affordable price, so it's no surprise that the third iteration manage to stay comfortably below the 100-dollar price point. One of the more innovative features of the shoe was this:

Most creative feature of the shoe...

An over-sized, diagonal eyelet coupled with exterior flap which had 2 evenly spaced holes in them. This construction allowed the shoelaces to be configured for 2 levels of lockdown: Regular for the upper hole and maximum for the lower one.

Very nice touch, but boy are these cheap!

I mean, purely out of the box, the KD III's screams mediocre quality. Only after some effort do the standard-issue flat laces squeeze through hastily cut eyelets. If you're used to the buttery entrance and exit of LeBron or Jordan laces, remind yourself that these cost almost half as much. The XBOX controller detail on the heal didn't do it for me either. It felt like a half-assed idea for a heal detail that I am both surprised and disappointed it made it onto the shoe. My pair had uneven soles on the left heal and a slightly caved-in side-panel which gave the sneaker's silhouette a strange deformation. It's not noticeable once you put it on, but still... it's cheap. The sizing is also inconsistent across the series: US9.5's felt tight and the lockdown was great on the II's, but US10's feel a lot wider and loose on the III's. Maybe I overcompensated, o maybe the strap on the II's did more than I thought it did.

And the most uncreative...

If it weren't for the zesty lemon color, I doubt I would have picked these up at all. However, taking into consideration that I had to pay above retail for these, I have the right to be critical. All this might change when I take these Pikachus out for a spin, we'll see.