Real life may have surpassed the future that Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to in Back to the Future II, but unfortunately we have not yet realized all of the promised technology we saw in their version of 2016. Our hoverboards don’t float–but they do catch on fire–tiny pizzas don’t get any bigger, and we still have to tie our own damn shoes. Or do we? Apparently we’ve had self-lacing sneaker technology for a long time in the form of LEGOs.
We first came across this clever piece of LEGO engineering at LaughingSquid, and it’s the work of industrial designer Vimal Patel of New Zealand. He said he was doing “a quick experiment into combining LEGO with other materials,” and that after using “a dremel and a hot glue gun to fix a few LEGO connection points” he played around with a few different designs until he got this working model, which pulls the laces tighter by winding them. You can see it in action in our player above.
Nike did have a very limited release of real, self-lacing Mag sneakers, just like Marty McFly wore, last year, but they were only available in a raffle, and we didn’t win them (still and always bitter!), so these badboys are right up our alley, even though Patel is “sure it can be done much better with a bit of effort.”
But we think he isn’t giving himself enough credit. He took an old beat-up shoe and some LEGOs and made something very cool that we’ve been waiting for since we saw them on the big screen in 1989.
That’s heavy.
What do you think of these? Would you wear them? Tell us why in the comments below.
 Featured Image: Vimal Patel
