The Air Jordan IV (4) was released in 1989. Michael kept on playing in a confident and dominating way and won numerous honors and awards.
The design, by Mr. Hatfield, wasn't as revolutionary as the previous designs and kept a lot of the feeling from the third model. The Air Jordan shoes had started to get major popularity by now and sold out every here and there.
Spike likes Mike
When it came to commercials Nike continued with Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee
) and created the famous Can/Can't tv commercial. Spike Lee really liked these shoes personally and gave them some extra promotion in his movie Do The Right Thing.
A classic scene for all AJ fans is when one of the persons in the movie gets his brand new Air Jordan IV (4)'s scuffed by a bicycle rider and flips out about it, places his shoe upon a fire-hydrant and cleans it with a toothbrush. Rent the movie today if you haven't seen it!
Retro negative trend changes
When the Air Jordan IV (4)'s were retro'd 1999 in Air Jordan 4 (IV) Retro 1999 - White / Black (Cement) and Air Jordan 4 (IV) Retro 1999 - Black / Cement Grey, it was crazy. Stores sold out after a few hours and everyone seemed to want a pair. As you can see a totally different approach to when the Air Jordan 1 (I), Air Jordan 2 (II) and Air Jordan 3 (III) were first retroed.
Nike, or Jordan Brand, realized that this was a golden opportunity to cash in so they started releasing so called Retro+ models. These had a similar design to the original but featured new colors or some minor design changes.
There has been different reactions to the Retro+ models and not all of them have been positive but they seemed to sell pretty well so probably most people were happy with them.
Three years of new retro's
2004, 2005 and 2006 all saw new retro releases of the Air Jordan IV. 2004 featured new Retro+ colors in Air Jordan 4 (IV) Retro - White / Chrome - Classic Green and Air Jordan 4 (IV) Retro - Cool Grey / Chrome - Dark Charcoal - Varsity Maize. Cool Grey starting to be a standard Air Jordan retro color following the success of the Air Jordan 11 (XI) Retro - Cool Greys (Medium Grey / White - Cool Grey).
