The Nike Zoom LeBron IV "Fruity Pebbles" By Designer Ken Link

The Nike Zoom LeBron IV (4) is one of the most innovative shoes in LeBron’s signature series but the “Fruity Pebbles” edition is the most colorful and eye-catching shoe that has yet to be released for LeBron or nearly any other player for that matter.

The concept of the colorway is simple: Fruity Pebbles cereal. The execution and delivery and the reason it resonates with its audience is much more complex. Under normal circumstances, a rainbow colorway is off limits when it comes to masculine apparel, but the LeBron IV “Fruity Pebbles” transcends this stereotype and in my eyes is a display of the light spectrum. The smooth pearl white of the shoe symbolizes pure white light and as it passes through the shoe, it is broken up into the pure colors (red, yellow, blue) and secondary colors (green, orange, purple) of the color wheel on the sole. The colors aren’t truly pure however due to their translucent properties, but this translucency almost adds to the vibrancy of the colors by letting more light penetrate and therefore reflect. The colors are also laid out as they are diametrically opposed on the color wheel to bring a sense on consonance to the otherwise opposed colors. The complementary colors of green and red meet in the center, then blue and orange, and purple and yellow complement eachother and respectively reverberate out corresponding to one another symmetrically from the horizontal axis of the sole to bring balance. The larger portions of the cool blue and purple are further balanced by a dash of bright orange in the blue panel and the warm yellow heel is cooled down by some light blue which further accentuates the complementary colors.

The spectrum colors take on a higher-value tint on the midsole of the shoe which meshes better with the predominately white upper. This higher value can be an attempt to use local color as we are most familiar with cereal soaked in milk which lightens its color and appears to “bleach” it.

The biomorphic all-over pattern of the “pebbles” becomes warmer despite their higher value due to the increase of red and orange. At points the red and orange become an optical mixture of red-orange when juxtaposed to create an analogous color scheme with the yellow that vibrates against its complements of blue, green and purple.

The LeBron IV “Fruity Pebbles” is an intriguing shoe, not only from a shoe enthusiast standpoint, but of a psychological and artistic standpoint as well. Is it a representation of milk and cereal? Is it an analogy of a child’s hunger for sugary cereal to LeBron’s hunger for a championship? Or is it just something cool Nike did for LeBron because he loves Fruity Pebbles? All are acceptable answers and all are evoked by the experience and inspiration for the highly coveted colorway.

Take a closer look at all the colorways at nikelebron.net.