The Nike Mag self-lacing sneakers from Back to the Future II are finally a reality—27 years after the movie, five years after Nike built a Mag prototype, and seven months after it announced a different self-lacing shoe altogether.
The sneaker maker announced the release of the 2016 Nike Mag on Tuesday morning. It will be made available in an extremely limited edition: Only 89 pairs will be made (the significance of the number wasn't made clear, though Back to the Future II came out in 1989), and they will be handed out in an online raffle—tickets for which cost $10 and will benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the Back to the Future actor's organization that is looking to find a cure for Parkinson's disease.
The online draw begins today and runs through next Tuesday. Winners will be notified on Oct. 17. There is no limit to the number of tickets you can buy, and 100 percent of the proceeds will go to the MJFF.
Mark Parker, chairman, president and CEO of Nike, talks about the Mag here:
"Though it initially shared only a few seconds of screen time with Michael, the idea behind the Nike Mag unlocked something much bigger at Nike," Parker said in a statement. "It sent us down an uncharted path of innovation, but it also opened our eyes to our ability to fight some of the world's biggest challenges. We feel privileged for the opportunity to raise even more awareness for the fight against Parkinson's."
Nike held a similar fundraiser in 2011 for the MJFF involving a prototype of the Mag. A version of the shoe was built then and auctioned, raising nearly $10 million in 10 days.
Five years later, adaptive footwear is more reality than fantasy. This past spring, Nike introduced the HyperAdapt 1.0, a performance shoe that automatically laces and fits to the unique shape of your foot.
The HyperAdapt is nice, but it's not the Mag. Back to the Future fans will be glad to see the Mag is now a real sneaker, too—it uses technologies developed for the HyperAdapt and applies them to the original Mag design, creating what Nike calls "an individually responsive system, called Adaptive Fit, that senses the wearer and tightens or loosens accordingly."