Product/Website Review: Chuck Taylor's Converse All Stars/ Bagginsshoes.com

This is Not Your Grandfather's Basketball Shoe Anymore!

When I was in seventh grade, back in the year 198X, I remember that one of the most popular sneakers was a Chuck Taylor’s Converse All Star that was purple on one side, orange up the tongue and green down the other side. They were funky, ergo, they were cool. Nowadays if, anyone were to be posed with the question, “What is the greatest selling basketball shoe of all time?” the answer would likely be something like “Nike Air Jordan” or possibly even the “Reebok’s Pump”. Both answers would be dead wrong. The answer, of course, is the subject of this article: Chuck Taylor’s Converse All Stars Basketball shoe.

In the early days of the All Star, (Now also known simply as “Chuck’s”) which came into production in 1917, the shoe only came in one color: Black. In 1921, the company hired a salesman who was convinced that the Converse company had stumbled upon the greatest basketball shoe to ever be invented. He sold it accordingly. That salesman’s name was Chuck Taylor, a former pro-basketball player for a team called the Akron Firestones. In 1923, the company added Chuck’s name to the shoe and to date, over six hundred million pairs of the shoes have been sold worldwide. In 1966, the Converse company, owned a whopping 80% of the sneaker industry, and nearly every basketball player in the world was wearing a pair of Chuck Taylor’s Converse All Stars.