Nike Dunk High Pro Sb 'Bazooka Joe'
Colorway: Blue Head/White-Black · Style code: 305050-410 · Price: $450 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Nike Dunk High Unlucky Sneakers (305050-001) · Nike Dunk High Pro SB 'Fog' (305050-002) · Nike Dunk High Pro SB 'Melvins' (305050-003) · Nike Dunk High Pro SB 'Pee Wee Herman' (305050-004) · Nike SB Dunk High Sneakers (305050-005)
Bubble gum comics give the 'Bazooka Joe' Dunk High Pro SB its nickname, borrowed from the eyepatch-wearing kid in the strips folded inside Bazooka gum. Its palette is one Nike lists as blue head, white and black: blue carries the upper, white supplies the contrast and black traces the outline. Together they give the shoe the flat, bold-colour look of a cartoon panel, and the nickname stuck. Retail was $95, the regular price for a Pro SB High, and the build is the usual skate spec: padded tongue on elastic straps, padded collar, Zoom Air under the heel.
Blue and white is also a very basketball palette for an SB Dunk. The Dunk started life as a college hoops shoe sold in team colours for a set of college programs, and Nike SB later revisited that idea with a white-and-orange 'Syracuse' High; a blue and white Pro SB High like this one reads as school colours before it reads as a gum reference. That double meaning is part of the appeal: worn with jeans it is a clean two-tone high-top, and only someone who knows the nickname sees the cartoon. It is a two-tone high-top first and a gum joke second, which is the right order for a shoe meant to be skated.