Adidas Energy Boost 'OG' 2013
Colorway: Black/Neon Metallic Iron/Vivid Yellow · Style code: G64392 · Release date: February 2018 · Price: $2843 · Availability: Available now
Boost did not start at adidas. BASF had worked out how to expand thermoplastic polyurethane into small closed-cell beads, and the two companies spent roughly three years figuring out how to fuse thousands of them into something a runner could put weight on. The steam-molding process that resulted is why a Boost midsole looks like packed pellets rather than a poured slab.
The Energy Boost was the shoe chosen to carry it, launched in New York at the end of February 2013 with a midsole made almost entirely of those beads. The claim was energy return rather than shock absorption: the material springs back instead of flattening, and it holds its properties in cold weather where standard EVA stiffens.
The upper was its own experiment (a stretch sleeve wrapped in a plastic cage) and drew nearly as much comment as the sole. Later Boost models kept the midsole and quietly dropped the cage.