Adidas steps on public's toes with new 'shackle shoes'

Adidas pulled its JS Roundhouse Mids, originally due to hit stores in August, after receiving complaints surrounding its controversial design.

“Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your kicks to your ankles?”

The adidas JS Roundhouse Mids, designed by Jeremy Scott, were advertised as a sneaker so coveted owners would have to chain the shoes to their ankles to prevent theft.

Unfortunately, the world will never know whether the chains were actually necessary.

Adidas announced Tuesday that the shoes would not be sold in August as planned because of complaints that the orange shackles referenced slavery.

“We apologize if people are offended by the design and we are withdrawing our plans to make them available to the marketplace,” adidas said in a statement.

Scott insists that he is not racist and tweeted “MY WORK HAS ALWAYS BEEN INSPIRED BY CARTOONS, TOYS, & MY CHILDHOOD...” Attached to the tweet was a picture of My Pet Monster -- a cuddly toy from the '80s that has orange shackles hanging from its wrists.

Apparently, the manufacturers did not imagine their product would receive the immense amount of backlash it did seeing that the sneaker almost made it to stores.

This prompts the question: Are we as a country too sensitive?

Kwaku Osei-Bonsu, a senior public relations major at Howard University, said he thinks so -- although he did call the shoes “socially insensitive.”

“It’s only as serious as we make it,” Osei-Bonsu said in a Facebook comment regarding the shoes. “People everywhere have become hypersensitive to just about everything. We must remember that being offended by something is a choice.”

Before the news of the sneakers' cancellation was announced, Osei-Bonsu didn’t believe the controversy would affect the sales.

Erica England, a 21-year-old student at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, N.C., was offended by the design and said she would boycott them.

“Considering the history in this country, including those unjustly incarcerated, why would anyone buy into the hype?” England commented.

For Osei-Bonsu, slavery wasn’t the first offensive imagine that came to mind.

“If anyone should be offended it should be people who are currently incarcerated,” he said in his comment.

Gabriel Kelson, a senior at DeVry University in Columbus, Ohio, expressed the same feelings in his comments about the sneakers.

“I just think they are ugly and probably if there was not an article attached to the shoes I would of thought of prison not slavery,” he said. "This is not the first time this year consumer outcry has led to companies pulling items from their shelves."

Earlier this month, liquor stores in Idaho banned Five Wives vodka. The label shows five women, clad in bonnets and 19th century-style dresses, holding kittens in the hem of their dresses -- exposing their undergarments. Idaho’s Liquor Division considered the label to allude to polygamy and possibly offensive to Mormons and women, although it has since reversed its decision and will allow the brand to be sold.

The director of the distillery that produces the vodka told Robert Siegel, host of NPR’s All Things Considered, that their products “could be interpreted in many different ways and it’s what the viewer or reader of the label brings as baggage.”

And remember Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks’ Taiwanese-American point guard that rocketed from obscurity to NBA stardom?

To honor the basketball star and Harvard grad, a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop near Harvard’s campus rolled out “Taste the Lin-sanity.” The new flavor that included vanilla, honey swirl -- and pieces of fortune cookies.

The ice cream received enough criticism to make the company quickly exchange the fortune cookies for waffle cones.

Ben & Jerry's also had to pull a flavor called “Schweddy Balls." But you get the idea.

Whether you feel the sneakers (or any of the products above) are offensive or not, our country's free-market system means the ultimate way you let your voice be heard is by how you spend your money.

Jordan Duckens is a Summer 2012 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about her here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.