Go Go Gadget Sneakers!

Author's Rating:

Pros: They're shoes with freaking wheels in them. What's not to love?

Cons: Takes practice to learn to skate or walk in them, risk of injury is present.

The Bottom Line: 
Men (and boys) are naturally attracted to three PG-13 rated things: Pizza, explosions, and things with wheels on them. I rest my case.

Author's Review
Somewhere, somebody is getting very rich over the fact that they've figured out how to make something your kids will actually want to go shoe shopping for. On the surface, Heelys are one of those smack-your-forehead, why-didn't-I-think-of-that sort of ideas.

Shoes. With wheels in the soles. What prepubescent boy wouldn't want a pair of those? Believe it or not, they actually make them in big people sizes, too. So I hopped right to it and bought myself a pair.

Yeah, yeah. Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional, yada yada. Look, my idea of a good time tends to involve getting on a stateboard and hurling myself down a small hill, getting on a mountain bike and hurling myself down a large hill, or strapping on a harness and hurling myself off of a cliff. Frivolity is my middle name.

These things are so up my alley.

There are veritable oodles of different styles of these things, and they all have silly whimsical names. Mine are “Vapors.” Epinions seems to insist on separating every single cosmetic variant of these shoes into a separate product, which is sort of like making a separate heading for every different color of the '07 Honda Civic. But here we are.

All Heelys (I keep wanting to spell that “Heelies”) work pretty much the same way: You have a sneaker, and it's got a funny shaped sole that's very thick in the heel. Set into this heel is a removable wheel that looks sort of like a cross between an inline skate and a skateboard wheel. There are variants that have two wheels per shoe instead of one, which presumably makes them function less like a shoe, more like a dedicated skate. You also get a pair of plugs that can go in place of the wheels, turning your Heelys more or less into regular shoes. The wheels (and plugs) can pop in and out with the aid of a special tool that comes with the shoes that does the job any butter knife could perform should you happen to lose it. The plugs are a concession, I suppose, for the parents of that one kid who absolutely insists on wearing his Heely's absolutely everywhere up to and including, say, church.

Walking normally in these things is also a bit of an adventure. The best analog I can come up to describe it with is walking in high heels.

Do not ask me how I know this, by the way. It involved crossdressing for costume purposes and a bet. That's all I'm saying.

Anyway, you can't walk with the normal heel-toe gait in these shoes because putting your heel down first will place you on the wheel, which means your foot will slip out from under you and you'll look a fool. You have to walk toe first, which takes conscious effort to do after a lifetime of unconsciously walking normally.

In any event, these things are basically stealth roller skates. With practice, it's possible to walk around more or less naturally until you get the urge to go. And then (again, with practice) you can just kick off and you're rolling.

The “practice” part is the sticky wicket.

I am, somewhat begrudgingly, a full grown adult. I am a man. I own a car and do my own work on it. I am proficient with abovementioned skateboard, firearms, and every power tool under the sun. I can ride a motorcycle, I can rappel down cliffs, I can hit a golf ball really damn far. I can put stuff together. I figure stuff out. I don't need no stinking directions.

But suddenly, I have a newfound respect for these little snot-nosed kids I see zipping around on their Heelys at the supermarket. These things took me a good full day to figure out. Skating with these things is not anything that I'd describe as intuitive. Any experience you may have with traditional roller skates or inlines? Out the window. Doesn't apply here.

For starters, you have one wheel per foot neatly positioned on the heel, giving you a perfect pivot point to dump yourself head over heels without the proper method of balancing yourself. The correct way to do it, it turns out, is not to keep your feet side-by-side on the wheels – This is an express ticket for the 5:15 to Flat On Your Back. Instead, you position one foot in front of the other (you can stagger them left-right a bit if you like) and find that it's actually... well, not entirely natural, really, but workable.

Your kids will figure this out in about two seconds, and make you look like a buffoon. Hey, I'm just giving you fair warning, here.

The directions that come with the shoes have two dire caveats. The first is an amusing warning never to use the shoes to roll faster than you can run. Really, this is sort of an obvious wisdom along the lines of “never eat anything larger than your head.” With practice, it is perfectly possible to skate faster than you can run, and with the aid of a hill it actually becomes frighteningly easy. If you haven't got the knack of using the toes of the shoes as brakes your default panic mode is likely to be to just put both toes down and transition immediately to running. Which, if you're going faster than you can naturally run is an faceplant waiting to happen. Okay, we get it.

But I routinely skate faster than I can run on smooth surfaces. Isn't that the point? If I wanted to stick to running speed, I'd just run.

Anyway, there's also a tag on one of the shoes that's the closest thing I've ever seen to a real-life End User License Agreement. The short version is that by removing this tag, you agree not to hold Heelys responsible for whatever grave injury you or your kid manage to inflict on yourselves with these shoes.

It just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

The instructions also state that you are expected to wear full protective gear including knee and elbow pads, gloves, and a helmet when using your Heelys. I can't imagine for the life of me someone dressed in this getup in public, but that's just me. Wearing at least pads while you're trying to figure out how you use your new toys would probably be a good idea, but anything beyond that strikes me as a little silly.

And no, you won't win a dime by suing me over it if your kid busts his rump on his new shoes, because I haven't got two nickels to rub together. Sorry.

I can't pass judgment on weather or not these will be a good idea for your child, all things considered. Since they masquerade as shoes and not dedicated roller skates, your kid will be wearing these things in all kinds of uncontrolled environments like stores and school and the street outside, likely with zero protective gear as previously mentioned. If your kid is uncoordinated to the point that he trips over his own shoelaces more then five times a day, a pair of these things might not be the best idea. It's perfectly possible to hurt yourself with a pair of Heelys, just as it is with any piece of sporting eqipment. Treating them like roller skates, a bike, or a skateboard seems to be the best way to handle it.

So, I absolutely love my Heelys. You'd have to drop a house on me and pry them off my cold dead feet like the wicked witch of the East. After the initial learning phase (which I suggest you do in the privacy of your own home where people can't point and laugh at you) I've worked myself up to the point that using the things as a faster-than-walking mode of transportation is actually feasible. I use them at work all the time, using them for things that are probably incredibly ill-advised like carrying boxes and such while rolling myself down the loading ramp in the stockroom and out onto the floor. It's just fun.

(Hey, I'm the manager. I can roll around with skate shoes however I darn well please. And I haven't managed to kill or injure myself with them even mildly yet.)

Buying your kid a pair of these things will probably cement you on his list of Coolest People Ever.

Buying a pair for yourself in the process is a good way to have your kid make you look like a total uncoordinated clod.

But it'll all be in good fun.

Trust me.