4/20 is still more than a month away, but Nike is wasting no time prepping for the high holiday. In a new set of leaked pictures, it appears that the multi-national sportswear brand will be celebrating this year’s annual smokeout with a new pair of high-top Dunk SBs based on the famed sativa strain, “Strawberry Cough.”
Despite Nike’s status atop the corporate sneaker heap, the Swoosh has always spent big bucks to stay relevant with the cool kids and tastemakers. For stoners, that means an yearly skateboard shoe paying homage to some part of cannabis culture. Last year, the brand rolled out a “Dogwalker” shoe, and a “White Widow” mid top marked the holiday in 2018.
This year, Nike once again tapped legendary Midwest skateboard artist and designer Todd Bratrud to create the kushy kicks. In a leaked picture of this year’s 4/20 Dunk SB, sneaker fiends can check out a red and green shoe styled in the vein of the fruit-flavored sativa “Strawberry Cough.” The bright pair comes decked out with a strawberry seed print, a clear sole, premium materials, and a coughing strawberry decal on the outer heel and insoles.
In addition to hemp shoes and intergalactic dunks in past years, Bratrud has used motifs from Cheech & Chong to help Nike stay hip on 4/20 without explicitly engaging with the words cannabis, weed, or marijuana. Yet with close to a decade of 4/20 SB Dunks in their portfolio, neither Nike or Bratrud has ever spoken candidly about the annual collaboration.
Of course, because the new pictures are an unofficial leak, we cannot confirm whether the Strawberry Cough shoes will actually be hitting skate shops on 4/20. But if confirmation does come, make sure to get in line early, as Nike Dunk SBs continue to draw fanatic obsession from sneaker heads across the world.
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