"My mom wouldn’t buy me Reebok Pumps. It was the early ‘90s and all the kids were chasing after the latest innovation in basketball sneakers. These shoes were supposed to make you jump higher, run faster, and they cost as much as a video game system. The rubberized miniature basketball on the tongue was a status symbol, like a red tab on your jeans or a Raiders logo on your hat. Only the coolest kids with the hottest girlfriends had Pumps. My shoes had velcro straps and duct-taped soles, but no matter how much I begged, my mom wouldn’t buy me Reebok Pumps. Once the world had caught onto those shoes, it was all about who had the newest styles. It wasn’t until Cross Training Pumps that I really lost myself. This shoe was built for guys like me, who weren’t particularly good at any one specific sport, but kinda sorta sucked at a variety of them. The AXT sealed the deal. My favorite part about the AXTs were that they weren’t obnoxious and clunky. They were just enough of a Reebok Pump at a mid-top to get the point across. I never got those AXTs. Even after Pumps started resurging over the last decade, I never saw them in the lineup. Only until recently did they start emerging and I felt that lust welling up inside me again. This is my way of finally having them. For all the kids whose mom wouldn’t buy them Pumps. This is The Hundreds and Reebok Pump." -an excerpt from an essay Bobby Hundreds wrote about the Reebok Pump when the collab dropped in 2014.
