15 Things You Never Knew About the Nike MAG

There is a division within Nike that works to get product placement in movies, on stage, and in TV shows. This was the first time a sneaker was created for a film straight from scratch. “It was a new idea for us to design a specific product for a specific purpose in a specific movie. It was a first for us to actually be involved in anything like this.” – Tinker Hatfield

“One, they did have this notion of magnetic levitation technology and what could be called a “Nike MAG” that was already written into the script. That was part of how Marty McFly was going to stay adhered to the hoverboard. But also, they had some storyboards where various characters that were wearing our shoes could walk up walls or stand on ceilings or be able to do something else extraordinary that you wouldn’t normally be able to do. I remember those conversations and seeing some early pre-development storyboards that really started to shape what the shoe became.” – Tinker Hatfield
 

“I figured there was very little room for negotiation or change, and it wasn’t like that at all. Once I realized that we had a real opportunity to design the product, and also come up with how it could be introduced and maybe also influence the story of the movie, that was fun. I went back with Mark, and we compared our notes and I went off and just started doing sketches and model making. We put together a little team and started prototyping it up.” – Tinker Hatfield

“We didn’t really have to make it do everything that it was purported to do. We had to make it look a certain way and give it certain characteristics, and we did put a lighting system in it, but everything else was done with wires and some backroom editing. Very different than designing a product that has to be worn for real in a real environment and actually be capable. This one didn’t have to be capable. There was a big battery pack that Michael J. Fox had to wear in his back pocket, and it had wires that led down both pant legs, and it was pretty crude if you really want to get down to it. We didn’t need it to not to be crude. It just needed to have power to it, and we knew that he was going to have long pants on anyways. All of this power lace stuff, we had to build a few different versions of the shoes so that the power lacing system could be actuated by prop men from underneath. They were below the ground and pulling on cables that made that shoe autolace. We just made the shoes that allowed them some freedom to put their prop people to work and make it look like the shoe could do what it did on the screen. Some of it was pretty easy actually, because we were relying on the movie industry to create reality out of fantasy. ” – Tinker Hatfield

“They had to be in more than one size, because Michael J. Fox has a pretty small foot, and there were a couple of stunt people that were a bit bigger. So they gave us the sizes that we needed to make them for, and we had to really hurry to get these things put together and down to the set.” – Tinker Hatfield

“It was all drawn out, and it had Marty McFly actually sitting not in the doorsill of the DeLorean, but actually on a bench putting on the shoe and saying, “Power laces!” They took that and adapted that to Marty McFly going into the future and being handed the shoes and sitting on the doorsill of the DeLorean to put them on. They were lifeless and kind of crumpled up, and then he puts them on and says, “Power laces!” I always thought I should get some writing credit for that. It seemed like I was the one who came up with that, but in the end, we were just so thrilled to be involved in the process to the degree that we were. To go and actually see it at the theater was amazing.” – Tinker Hatfield

“I thought electronics were going to play a pretty big role in the future, and I don’t think those were very difficult predictions to make. It was just like, 'Yeah, probably shoes will magically be put together in some other way.' So we glued the Swoosh on so you didn’t see any stitching, all the while thinking that there might be some cool way to do that in the future. The shoe was almost seamless, and I think it came across as being seamless, which was cool.” – Tinker Hatfield

“We’ve designed other movie products since that original Back To The Future 2 movie, like the Bat boots that we did for Batman.” – Tinker Hatfield

“Tiffany and I went to an on-Nike campus event where you’re supposed to wear your coolest sneakers. It was in the Tiger Woods Center, and I talked Tiffany into wearing them, even though I think she really wanted to wear them but was scared that she’d get in trouble. I just said, ‘Ah, why don’t you wear them?’ So she wore them to the event, and I wore a different pair of sneakers, but I told her, ‘OK, the rule is this: If someone asks you about these, which they will, your official response is ‘No comment.'” – Tinker Hatfield

“I was just having a one-on-one with Tinker, and I was new in the group. I was chatting with him about how the company works, and so on and so forth, and shortly after that he approached me and said ‘Hey, do you want to work on a project?’ I said, ‘What is it?’ and he told me, ‘Let's remake this Back to the Future shoe. There’re petitions and things, and people want this shoe.’” – Tiffany Beers

“Our original launch was that we thought we could make the 20th anniversary. We didn’t really formulate that into a few months into the project. But that didn’t happen.” – Tiffany Beers

“We tried to set up a formal Nike weartest, but then too many people would know about it. So, we had to go rogue on that too, and found a series of weartesters. The original shoe was a size 7, and since that was the smallest, we had to build everything into that. We could always make things bigger, but getting them smaller was really hard. We learned that because we build a 9 first, and that didn’t work out so well, so we went back to a 7. So, we found several folks at the factory that were size 7s, and they were in innovation, so they could wear them while they were at work, and there wouldn’t be too many questions asked.” – Tiffany Beers

“We spent hundreds of hours in the warehouse sorting product and inspecting product. Each shoe had been inspected by someone probably, at least, 10 times. We went through them and through them – we wanted them to be perfect. Once the consumer got it, they weren’t going to want to return it, so we wanted it to be perfect for them. “ – Tiffany Beers

At the MAG unveiling event in 2011, British rapper Tinie Tempah won the first pair of sneakers auctioned off for a whopping $37,500.

At the time of the auction, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of the genetics company 23andMe, were running the Brin Wojcicki Challenge, a charitable program which matched the auction totals. That means a grand total of $9.4 million was donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, thanks to the Nike MAG.