In 2019, sneaker hype is nothing new. Nearly every weekend has a sneaker release that causes people to rev up their bots, resellers to wait in online queues, and shops to implement raffles. This has grown over time. The 2000s saw a few shoes that helped build this reselling and hype economy, mainly Nike SBs and the first Air Yeezy. But it really grabbed its foothold in the 2010s. Brands got hip to the hype and have it down to a science.
A lot of sneaker hype is calculated by the aftermarket price on a shoe. And that’s an easy way to look at things. But what about the anticipation that leads up to a sneaker, with blogs posting and would-be customers foaming at the mouth? So we looked into which sneakers had people going crazy before their drop, looking for every bit of release date info, and ultimately had a huge release. We broke down the 10 sneakers that caused the most build-up prior to their release.