In 2004, Pharrell Williams, Nigo and Reebok introduced the first Ice Cream sneakers. The original boutique shoe was simple in shape, almost like a Stan Smith, but its surfaces belonged to another universe. Diamonds and dollar signs covered one version. Others carried beepers, money rolls and for the ladies; teddy bears.
The Colette pairs remain, to me, the best Ice Cream sneakers ever made. There were samples and customs that lived mostly in forum photographs, including a pair decorated with beer cans. At the time, even seeing one felt like finding a piece of a brighter world that had escaped into the real one.
That was the appeal of Ice Cream. The shoes were only one part of an environment Pharrell and Nigo had built out of skate videos, music, Japanese streetwear, expensive materials and comical artwork rendered with absolute conviction. A beeper could be a luxury print. A cartoon ice cream cone could become a skull and crossbones. The humor did not make the project any less serious as design.
The Board Flip came later, followed by the Board Flip 2. These were wider skate shoes made for a wider audience than the boutique originals. Jimmy Gorecki, who rode for the Ice Cream team, has recalled preferring the first slim shoe for skating and finding the Board Flip difficult to skate in. The reception was uneven in stores, too. I remember pairs sitting on clearance racks. Yet the people who loved them really loved them.
For years, the Board Flip seemed to belong to that specific moment in the mid 2000s. Then Ice Cream and Reebok brought it back at ComplexCon in Las Vegas in 2025, with Don Toliver helping to champion the return. A limited Watermelon release led to his Banana Split version, and the shoe subsequently returned in a wider release. Don’s contribution was less a radical redesign than an argument that the original was worth seeing again. I agreed. Among all the new sneakers at ComplexCon, it was the one that stayed with me.
Now there are two Beer Board Flips: one silver, the other gold. Their metallic uppers evoke Japanese beer cans, with a red stripe cutting across the side. At the heel, the old cones and bones emblem has been remade as a pint of beer fusion that reminds me of Ditto. The silver pair is reported to be limited to 500 numbered pairs for ComplexCon Los Angeles on October 3 and 4. The gold pair is said to number just 25, with 19 allocated to a raffle there. The numbering inside the tongue is important here, a callback to the original boutique which were numbered out of varying amounts.
The beer motif feels like a strange callback to that custom pair I used to see on forums. Whether it was an intentional reference or a coincidence, it belongs to the same habit of taking an ordinary object and pushing it into Ice Cream’s cartoon logic. A shoe this shiny, with a beer at the heel, and Ice Cream on the tongue, will confuse anyone who has no history with the brand. That is a good sign.
Ice Cream sneakers was what first drew me into fashion (drop it like it’s hot video). I do not want them to be discreet or universally wearable. I like it as an object. The silver and gold are excessive, the beer cone is ridiculous, and the entire thing makes perfect sense. I also think it’s great that these were debuted by Dennis (@sneakerdenn) he is the most authentic sneaker curator out there currently.
