Every kid who watched Nickelodeon game shows from 1988 to the mid-90s knew about the BK Dymacels, but I never met a single person who owned them. To me, these shoes had only two purposes — they were the consolation prize on Double Dare and the basketball shoe of choice for all the characters in NES’s Arch Rivals. Every Double Dare episode wasn’t complete until Harvey nasally told the losing kids they had just won a pair of bootleg tennis shoes while they disappointingly wiped whipped cream off their goggles.

The whole consolation prize thing cast a certain “loser” stigma over the shoes and they never recovered to compete with the larger shoe companies. For kids, Nikes and Reeboks were the ‘trip to Space Camp’ of sneakers and the Dymacels were what you got stuck with when your teammate couldn’t find the damn orange flag in time…