Vibram FiveFingers Repair using Shoe Goo - Further Enhancement

I was poking around my shoe cabinet when I came across my 4 yr old Nike Air Zoom Elite+ 4.
I did not run much with this shoes because this is a stability shoes whereas I was supposed to need a cushioned shoes. So this became my anything but running shoes.

This is when it is good....I forgot to take a photo of the terrible state before i dump it:

The shoes looks ok from the top but the outsole is terrible, the outsole rubber was "peeled off" from the midsole....common problem of the Nike Shoes whether the glue will dry up if you do not use it for a long time. I seriously never have this issue with other brands before.

So I happily teared off all the outsole rubber before I discard the shoes to the rubbish bin. Then an idea struck me! My last enhancement to my Vibram FiveFingers Classic Brown/Walnut does not seems to be able to last as Shoe Goo is just Rubber and can wear off easily and I will have to keep spreading new layers to keep the thickness intact.......

So......I took the 2 pieces of outsole from the Nikes:

An decided to do something about it......

Curing in process:

An I got "Nike" on my 2 pinky toes!

Let see if this pair can last till 1500km......

A minimalist shoes patent which got Nike Free sued

The Reebok Realflex is being marketed as "Natural movement. Perfected"

When I saw Birthdayshoes.com mentioned about the upcoming Reebok Realflex, something came out of my memory.........

4 years ago in 2007 when the term "minimalist shoes" was never heard off, Nike was sued by Reebok over its Free series which was first launched in 2004. Apparantly, Reebok got a grant of their patent for flexible shoe with segmented soles in 2007.

I did recorded this event 4 years ago HERE @"Nike Got Sued by ReeBok"

This was an innovative and interesting idea to design shoes which are "minimalist" and flexible enough to be collapsible into smaller size and to be dispensed for sale from a vending machine.

This idea was never implemented.

Interestingly, after doing a quick search, I actually found 3 similar patents filed by Reebok over the past 4 years:

1) 2007, Patent 7168190 Collapsible Shoe

2) 2009, Patent 7637035 Collapsible Shoe

3) 2010, Patent 20100095554 Collapsible Shoe

In the end, the 2 early pioneers of minimalist shoes did not continue to drive the minimalist shoes market but have to do marketing catchup now....shoes without cushioning is still not in their belief and too high a risk to their high tech cushioned shoes.

The latest launched by Nike:

Free Run+ 2