I picked up my new Hoka Speedgoat shoes today (note: if you live in a condo, do not have Purolator deliver to your home address unless you also work at home because you will never see the delivery person or your package. Instead, have them take it to a local depot whose business hours coincide with your work schedule, forcing you to go there on the weekend, a day before the five-day holding period ends, after which the package gets transferred to Purgatory, as described in Dante’s Inferno). These are replacements for my original pair which had a nasty issue with color bleeding. Most of my running socks are now blue/white instead of just white.
The overall color is much more subdued yet also has a zany neon-like strip along the bottom to keep it from looking staid:
The color is officially called Astral Aura/Acid, to which my reaction is to nod my head and back away slowly. Still, I like the color scheme. However, the shoes came with this tag:
“Due to the nature of the material used some color migration may occur during wear.” Hmm, I say. This tag was not on the first pair of shoes. Nor have I seen it or anything like it on any other pair of shoes ever. It appears to be a direct warning that you will end up with color-stained socks (or feet if you go sockless). Questions come to mind, questions like:
- why would anyone make a shoe using a fabric that bleeds color?
- why if you absolutely need to use such a fabric would you not at least do something to mitigate the issue during manufacturing?
- really, why would you do this?
- seriously, this is a built-in flaw. Who thought this was a good idea?
- did someone think this tag would stave off complaints when the color bleeding happens?
- how many phrases did they go through before coming up with the wonderfully neutral-sounding “color migration”? The color doesn’t bleed or stain–it migrates, just like birds in the winter, except in this case it’s color instead of birds and it’s migrating to your socks instead of to the south, and it’s not just for the winter but forever unless you have detergent that works on migrating colors.
I’ll be wearing the shoes tomorrow so I’ll know soon enough how the potential migration goes. At least my feet will look nice as they’re getting stained.
