Yet I have horrendous blue shower sandals made of some kind of unidentified dense blue foam and these things are almost 30 years old. They barely show any sign of use.
I’ll never understand people not using shoes from day one until they literally disintegrate from daily use.
i buy nice shoes and still do this. Sneakerheads get weirdly upset about it, i have to defend it all the time. I buy shoes to wear them i thought thats what they were for
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A while back I noticed my foot was wet after walking through some water. It wasn’t deep so I was confused, then I realized it came through the hole that wore through the bottom of my shoe. That was the sign to go get new shoes.
If I find come across a great sale, I might as well pick it up. I wear my shoes until they disintegrate, so it takes a while to get through to the next one, so I’ll have a backup of maybe 3-4. It’s good to at least have one backup just in case anyway.
Those soles look like Styrofoam. Rubber does break down over time, so does plastic, but those soles look sus. They appear to be a generic brand too. I believe the manufacturers put together the cheapest shoe possible with 100-1000% mark-up. I’ve had $60 shoes from Kohls have sole failure after being worn 3x because they were made hollow instead of solid.
Yeah they really do
You forgot to check whether or not the shoes are cake before putting them on.
Always give your shoes a solid nom before wearing, to be sure they aren’t cake.
On second thought maybe collecting things made of volatile petroleum compounds wasn’t a good investment
That’s why I keep a oil reserve in a pit out back. Got my pool guy to line it with concrete. Stable and pure petroleum
And it’s so easy to put on! Just dip your toes in for a second and you’re good to go
Flint Lockwood!
Nah I saw this on reddit a while ago when I opened it by accident. It’s a stolen image of someone’s cheap shoes that disintegrated on first wear.
The guy claiming it had the receipts and posted the image like 3 months earlier.
Nah, I think I saw this on threads a bit more while ago :)
A couple of months ago I was invited to go hiking with some friends. When preparing, since I didn’t have some hiking boots, I saw my boots that I got in my military service. That was a great idea because they were already broken in and all of that stuff.
After around 3/4 of the almost 15km hike, I lost the sole on the first boot and a km after that the other side. Had to finish the hike on both without a sole.
Well, they were standing around for like 10 years so I am not surprised that they failed and that the whole stuff between sole and shoe Desintegrated but still.
10 years without being oiled, i guess. The leather would dessicate, maybe?
My soles have a cork layer that seems like it would crumble even if well treated.
The leather was fine. The part between the rubber sole and the leather shoe (I think it is called midsole?) just disintegrated.
The were stored in my shoe rack. I wouldn’t say that it is particularly humid there but it would be warm-ish (depending on the weather).
I wasn’t particularly shocked by this since they were simply lying around for that long. Maybe active use would have extended their life a bit more.
But maybe I can give them to someone that can add a new midsole so that they can be used again.
Sounds promising. My shoe guy charges $50CAD tor redoing the bottoms.
They don’t make boots like they used too. My boots from back then (just over 20 years old now) are still in great shape, Bates made some rock solid boots back then (either that or all the polishing in basic made them invincible).
Most likely they were stored in a warm and humid place. Polyurethane foam can get something called hydrolysis, where moisture breaks down the polymers in the foam.
My grandma once gave me a pair of “new shoes”. They fell apart in the middle of an all-day track in the Alps (big mountains). Turns out she bought them for my aunt years ago and then forgot about them.
Going to work a special occasion? I mean maybe he was unemployed for a long time, or got his dream job, but still, sounds funny without any context.
Or maybe he realized that if he hadn’t had a special occasion by then, maybe he should just wear his shoes and get some enjoyment out of them instead of saving them for some vague moment that might never come or maybe he wouldn’t even think about the shoes until after if it did. Or maybe such an occasion did come up and he did forget the shoes until after and then just decided to wear them to work.
Or he works a white collar job and had a presentation or something so it was a special occasion.
Happened to me. It was snowing like mad, so I thought I could use my hiking boots instead of shoes when I went out. After a few hundred meters, the foam between the boot and the sole started to disintegrate. When I was back home, the soles were only attached at the front, and the dampening material from the heel nearly to the toes was gone.
I went on a hike once with timberland boots that had been in a closet for a couple years. The glue dissolved at the destination (freshwater swimming area) and the rubber sole separated from the leather upper. I had to hike back to the car in moccasins.
Timerland boots are anything but good hiking boots.
Not good for any type of boot. I bought a pair on clearance from Sears. Legit wanted a pair of steel toe work boots for yard work and other work around the house. After about 3 years of light wear the soul started to fall away.
I would have been better off with a cheap work boot from Walmart.
On the flip side, i have a pair I bought in 1994 in an outlet mall on a road trip to LA to Vegas (as an Aussie), i still wear them.
Almost same thing happened to me, including them being timberland boots.
These things have long been subject to enshittification.
I had some Docs split between lower and mid sole after light wear. I guess there was a reason they got rid of their lifetime warranty.
Supposedly the good ones are Solovair, who made Docs at one point (probably when the warranty was still offered). But I doubt that few, if any shoes are made well anymore.
Yeah, I’ve looked at those. I worry about sizing though because I’d have to order online and at the time I think they only shipped from the UK so if they didn’t fit returning would be a PITA.
Wearing your shoes actually helps prevent this. Basically every sneaker collector has (or knows someone who has) a story like this. The soles get brittle over time, and will fall apart if they have sat for too long. But if you wear them, it helps avoid that from happening. The natural flexing when you walk helps the sole stay flexible. If it has sat for years, it will shatter into dust as soon as you try to flex it.
Sort of like how cast metal is more brittle than forged metal. Because when you cast metal, it hardens in random or crystalline molecular patterns. So there is very little actually holding the individual molecules together, because every join where two crystals meet is a potential fracture point. But forging it into shape with a hammer will create a more sturdy piece, because the hot hammering forces the molecules out of those natural crystal patterns. By moving the metal around, the molecules are able to form much stronger bonds with their neighbors.
Anyone who has accidentally shattered a cast iron skillet by dropping it knows what I’m talking about. People expect metal to bend, because they’re used to thinking of forged metals that have been mechanically shaped while it was hot. But cast iron will shatter like glass, because it is just poured into a mold and the molecules stay wherever they were when the molten metal cooled, even if they don’t have strong bonds with their neighbors.
your explanation is actually backwards, metals are counter intuitive at the molecular scale
Forging does not align the molecules, it actually mixes them up, and removes carbon.
Cast iron is brittle for 2 reasons. when cooling from molten the molecules are able to align into large crystals, and where these crystals meet is a boundary where cracks can start and easily propogate. And carbon in the mix makes it much more difficult for the molecules to “slip” past each other.
Hmm this might explain why the soles fell off my nice dress shoes after the second time ever wearing them.
Did you even looked at the best by date? Keep them in the fridge until you have to use them.
Gotta use the freezer-grade aluminum foil too.
They’re awful anyway. Also. So what?
