Retrospect: Pepsi platform sneakers

Self-tutoring about style: the tutor recalls Pepsi platform sneakers.

Likely, Pepsi platform sneakers were the first fashion product I realized. Sometime in the late 70s, I recall, they arrived. It may have been ’78, springtime.

I noticed someone wearing a new pair, and thought they were a novelty. I didn’t care for them; they looked clunky. I assumed that person alone would have a pair; since I didn’t like them, I assumed most other people wouldn’t either.

Within a month, half the people seemed to be wearing Pepsi platforms. I recall, at age 8, watching with surprise as more and more people got them. I wondered how they could be easy to run in, with soles that thick. Yet, I never heard anyone complain about them; everyone I knew who wore them seemed to love them.

After a couple of months, with “everyone” wearing them, I stopped noticing Pepsi platforms. I recall, maybe a year or 18 months later, wondering where, and when, they’d all gone.

Looking back, I realize that the reason Pepsi platforms were so surprising to me, at age 8, was likely that they were a young-adult fashion that caught on with elementary-school kids.

A curious fact about the Pepsi platforms: of the two menacing bullies I knew back then, one wore Pepsi platforms, but not the other. I always thought wearing Pepsi platforms constituted an important difference between them.