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Self-lacing 'Back to the Future' shoes still due this year, says Nike designer

Nike designer Tinker Hatfield says the shoe giant still expects to deliver Nike Mag shoes with "power laces" before the year is out.

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Amanda Kooser
2 min read

Nike Mag shoes from 201
The 2011 Nike Mag shoes came without power laces. Nike

There are ways to get pretty darn close to the self-lacing, exceedingly geeky-cool Nike Air Mag shoes that Marty McFly sported in "Back to the Future: Part II."

You can buy a set of sub-$100 replicas with lights (but no laces), go fishing for a 2011 pair of official Nike Mags (still no power laces) on eBay or hope that the underfunded Powerlace Kickstarter still manages to put out some shoes.

Shoe fans have been hoping 2015 would be the year Nike finally makes a pair of Mags with power laces. After all, 2015 is the future year in which the movie was set. We got some working hoverboards last year, so I think we're due for the real Mags. Nike designer Tinker Hatfield hinted in early 2014 that we would get some fully functional shoes in 2015, which certainly helped to stoke the hope.

According to Nice Kicks, a site dedicated to sweet shoes, we could be in for some futuristic footwear this year: "Without giving a release date, Tinker confirmed that his team is working as hard as possible to deliver the Nike MAG in 2015 with Power Laces, but also reminded us all that we still have '11 and two-thirds months left in 2015.'" The information came from Hatfield's appearance at the Agenda Emerge conference.

This is good news for "Back to the Future" fans and McFly wannabes everywhere. It's nice to know the project is still under way and hasn't been swept off into the land of forgotten sneaker innovations.

If all goes well, we'll get a video of somebody slipping on a pair of Air Mags, letting the shoes self-lace and then hopping on a Hendo hoverboard to make our geek fantasies come true. All we would need next is for the Cubs to win the World Series and then we could all hail Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis as precognitive savants.

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