Ever since their founding in 2002, Crocs has been a shoe company that’s risen to the top of the market with little to no delay. With an astonishing revenue of $3.6 billion per year being gained from the sales of these comfortable shoes, Crocs has established itself as a leading shoe seller. While they may be a household name of notorious comfort, however, they have one downfall: the shoes are distasteful to say the very least. Over the years, Crocs has presented many variations in shapes and colors, with the only attractive ones being the ones that look distinctly different from the standard and could be mistaken for another brand overall. A select few collaborations, however, remain at the pinnacle of hideous shoe design.
To start, Market Studios, formerly known as Chinatown Market, has over 5 collaborations with Crocs, ranging from collections of their famous shoe decorations, Jibbitz charms, to variations of the iconic shoes. In 2019, their first collaboration aired and started the downward streak of atrocious shoes from this company: the astroturf shoes. These shoes are plain, even lacking the iconic holes for charms, simply because the inside and outside is coated with artificial grass to create a miserable wearing experience. For those who enjoy the scratchiness of astroturf and wearing shoes that look like two small bushes, look no further.
In 2020, Crocs paired up with Kentucky Fried Chicken to make the most confusing pair of shoes out there. They released standard Crocs and platform Crocs with the top appearing to look like an abundant amount of chicken while the sides carry the iconic white and red striping of the chicken buckets. Their website claims that the shoes “make your dreams of wearing a bucket of chicken finally come true”, and I for one would like to know who fantasizes about wearing shoes that look and smell like a bucket of fried chicken.
In 2021, the next one up to the plate of working with Crocs was the famous condiment, Hidden Valley Ranch. Despite the strange collaboration between a shoe company and a sauce company, the Hidden Valley Ranch Crocs possess some semblance of normalcy in design, with Jibbitz that look like food and a standard white shoe with green specks, replicating the design of the ranch.
The following year, in 2022, another collab sent their steadily increasing streak of cute shoe designs spiraling downwards, as Jimmy Kimmel decided to collaborate with Crocs, releasing a mysterious pair of pizza-patterned shoes with strange pizza themed Jibbitz to match. While Jimmy Kimmel has an infamous recipe for margherita pizza floating on the Internet, releasing it a year following its peak popularity creates mystery over what connection Jimmy Kimmel has with pizza.
To continue off their undoubtedly infinite streak of odd shoes, k-pop group aespa spent this year designing their own Crocs, which seem to be teetering on the line of unlikable and somewhat cute. With purple and blue fur lining inside and out on these unique platform shoes, I feel that the faint sense of enjoyment I get looking at them comes from their resemblance of Sully from Monsters Inc.
From years past to this very day, Crocs still has an unredeemable streak of creating shoes that are a perfect clash between undeniable comfort and painstaking design choices. With their pattern of how their shoes drastically change in design, the Crocs of 2024 are still a mystery until someone steps up to the task of making a half-decent collaboration.
