The Air Jordan 4 was released in 1989. Michael kept on playing in a confident and dominating way and won numerous honors and awards. The design, by Mr. Hatfield, wasn’t as revolutionary as the previous designs and kept a lot of the feeling from the third model. The Air Jordan shoes had started to get major popularity by now and sold out every here and there.
The Air Jordan 4 was the first in the line that had an over-molded mesh. The reason for this is the consumer would think the shoe was made cheap. Therefore, what Tinker did was dip the mesh in a soft plastic and blew air through it to clear out the plastic in between.
Unlike the first series of retro Jordans in the mid-90s, the retro Jordans were an incredible success starting with the Retro Air Jordan 4 in 1999. When the Air Jordan 4’s were retro’d 1999 in white/black and black/cement grey it was crazy. Stores sold out after a few hours and everyone seemed to want a pair. As you can see a totally different approach to when the Air Jordan 1, Air Jordan 2 and Air Jordan 3 were first retroed.
Nike, or Jordan Brand, realized that this was a golden opportunity to cash in so they started releasing so called Retro+ models. These had a similar design to the original but featured new colors or some minor design changes. There have been different reactions to the Retro+ models and not all of them have been positive but they seemed to sell pretty well so probably most people were happy with them.
The Air Jordans 4 is also the first laser etched Jordan retros to be released. An online exclusive created 2 days of chaos across the US as thousands of Jordan heads tried to logon to Nike’s website to buy the limited sneakers. Nike released 2 colors termed “thunder” (Black/Yellow) and “lightning” (Yellow/Black). The prices were $500 and $250 respectively. Despite anger on the part of many Jordan collectors, both colorways sold out.
