If you happened to be lucky enough and experienced the mid-90s, you had to have some fresh kicks. Skimming through vintage Eastbay magazines, you’ll realize that '94 and '95 were good years to appease your thirst for sneakers, especially performance-based trainers were in full swing. Basketball shoes were big too; it was good times plain and simple. On that mid-90s note, how good was advertising back then, or is it just the retro feeling we have? Let’s cast our mind back to a time, the heydays of Rap music were about to start and 1994 and 1995 had their fair share, which brought us Nas Illmatic, the Fugees & Method Man released their legendary debuts, “Stranger Than Fiction” influenced a whole generation, while Green Day’s “Dookie” made being suburban cool. Oh, and Bo Jackson played his last game in ’94. 1995 wasn’t short of amazing; the Foo Fighters gave their debut, Michael Jordan came back to the NBA and playing Command & Conquer on your fresh Windows 95 kept you from finishing your homework. No idea what we are talking about, welcome to the mid-90s, a time when Seinfeld or the Friends cast were blessed with friends and family Nike trainers, Sheryl Swoopes became the second Nike athlete to have a shoe bear her name (guess the other) and the Nike Air Max2 Light was introduced.

The Nike Air Max2 Light was unveiled in 1994 as a companion more than a follow up to the Nike Air Max2 aka Nike Air Max Squared (besides a bunch of other Max2’s), a 1 ounce lighter and pretty different looking sneaker than the "heavy" version. The Max2 cushioning system, a unique 4-chambered compartmentalization of two different Air pressures in the rearfoot Air unit, provides the sweet blueprint for the Max2 handle. Technically spoken, the aforementioned pressure intermingle sees less pressure under the heel and higher-pressure in the pontoon-like units around the heel, resulting in what was back then a new running experience. The math behind the design was quite easy, more Air = less foam = light, really light. Nike didn’t stop there, by exchanging the foam with Phylon (compressed EVA) they aligned the lightweight Air bubble (featuring the correct PSI branding) with the ideal forefoot material resulting in a match made in heaven. But to be honest, the shoe’s narrative oscillates between the tech “below” and the ineffable layered upper and original colorways of which we finally see a retro release. As always, the secret lays somewhere in-between, and oh boy, Nike found it. And sure, it’s early in the year, but we have blocked one spot on our “Top Nine” of 2019 already.

The Nike Air Max2 Light University Gold, which is an unreleased colorway from back in the days, will be released online and in all European SNS stores on the 11th of January. The OG Nike Air Max2 Light “Blue Lagoon” will follow a week later.