Sneaker culture plays by its own set of rules. There may be no better example of what I’m talking about than its perception of Black Friday. You see, while the rest of the consumer industry slashes prices on older products, sneaker brands look at Black Friday as an opportunity to drop special releases (at full retail price!) on the annual day of shopping hysteria. As such, we’ve seen some pretty memorable models hit the shelves on the day when it seems like everyone in America is enjoying their second, or in my case, fourth serving of leftover turkey and mashed potatoes. 

In celebration of another impending Black Friday this year, we’re taking a look back at some of the best sneaker releases of the yearly shopping “holiday.” If you missed any of these on the year they originally came out, keep in mind that all of Black Friday’s greatest hits are in stock and ready to ship at AP sneaker.

In chronological order, these are the best Black Friday sneaker releases of all time.

Jordan Brand set its annual Black Friday sneaker drop in motion in 2009 when it re-released a modified version of the Jordan 12 “Flu Game.” The brand followed up with a release of the Jordan 7 Premio “BIN 23” on Black Friday in 2010. While both shoes were quickly gobbled up like a slice of grandma’s pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving dinner, sneaker collectors were truly satiated by 2011’s Black Friday drop: the Jordan 3 “Black Cement.” The buzz surrounding the “Black Cement’s” return was so strong at the time that some called the colorway the greatest Air Jordan shoe in history.

After releasing the Jordan 4 “Bred” in 2012, and the Jordan 5 “Oreo” in 2013, Jordan Brand got back to the tradition of dropping essential OG colorways for Black Friday in 2014 with the re-release of the Jordan 6 “Black/Infrared.” The black-and-red colorway eventually came back out with its original “Nike Air” branding intact in 2019, but make no mistake about it: even with the alternate Jumpman logo on the heel, the “Black/Infrared” Jordan 6 from 2014 was a must-have for collectors.

The Jordan 8 “Aqua” was Jordan Brand’s Black Friday special release in 2015. Why is that important? Aside from being a great and original Air Jordan colorway, the strong reception to the funky, thoroughly ‘90s style moved Jordan Brand to bring back another original, somewhat off-the-radar colorway in 2016, the Jordan 3 “True Blue.”

OK, sure, technically, the KAWS x Jordan 4 “Black” debuted on Cyber Monday, not Black Friday in 2017. But the follow up to the famed contemporary artist’s Jordan 4 was on the mind’s of everyone in sneakers the second they finished Thanksgiving dinner. Originally a Friends & Family edition, the Kaws x Jordan 4 “Black” received a proper retail release, but only on Kaws’ webstore via a raffle system on that fateful Monday back in November 2017.

Trends had come and gone so quickly in sneakers in the 2010s that by the end of the decade, all there was left to do was tear apart what was already kicking around the marketplace and make it one’s own. That’s exactly what Off-White and Union LA, among other collaborators, decided to do with their respective collaborations with Jordan Brand beginning in 2017. Black Friday 2019’s top sneaker release saw Union team up with Jordan Brand to bring a two-pack of cut-and-sew Jordan 1s inspired by OG designs.

This is a bold claim, but one that absolutely has merit: of all of the Black Friday releases we’ve reviewed up until now, none may have been as anticipated as 2020’s release: the Jordan 4 “Fire Red.” That’s because it was 31 years in the making—“Nike Air” hadn’t appeared on the back of the “Fire Red” since 1989 until it did once again in 2020. These actually dropped on the Saturday after Black Friday 2020, but we all know this is the sneaker we were waiting for that weekend.