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That joker Woody, eh? We were going to Photoshop the fuck out of him in revenge for his end-of-year hi-jinks, but we rose above. Because that's the kind of folks we are. Sneaker Freaker's reworking of the New Balance 850 is good. It's actually very, very good. Beyond the kangaroo theme, the use of materials gave the shoe the extra premium kick it needed to match the Asian-made version with the UK-made original, and that colour-blocking just worked. Good to see something different as the base model, and kudos to team SF for an excellent execution. We waited a long time for this model to come back, and we wish this makeup had led the retrospective charge rather than arriving later in the year, but it's definitely a case of better late than never - with superior leather.

Woody took a little time out to talk Skippy...

This shoe came and went. Are you pleased at the reception? New Balance fans were stoked with it and they're the toughest crowd to please...

Yeah I am pretty pleased actually. NB fans are hard to please, they’re well known for it. You could say they know what they like or that they’re all finnicky fuckers but I prefer the former! The trickiest dimension to the Skippys was that it was designed over two years ago. For a variety of reasons, it took such a long time to come out that I almost chickened out. The sample sat on my desk and every day I stared at it so much that I almost talked myself out of it. But slowly it really started to grow, and although it’s an incredibly odd looking shoe, it is dynamite on the foot. With shorts or denim, it looks the nuts. I guess it’s on the edge of genius and lunacy.

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about how it might be perceived, especially since style has become so incredibly conservative this year. I guess it comes down to why any of us even bother to design a shoe for a brand. What’s the point if you don’t have a crack and push things forward? We could have left the tan leather off the shoe and stitched up something conventional that is easier on the eye, but the world doesn’t need another regulation runner-by-numbers, that’s for sure. Watching the reaction has emboldened me to be a little braver when it comes to these things. With such lengthy production delays, perhaps we’ll cock one right up at some point but you have to back yourself in. I’ve seen a lot of shoes in the seven years I’ve been doing Sneaker Freaker so I should know what I’m on about... it certainly is a sound foundation of knowledge.

I get the impression that you weren't a big 850 fan in the first place which is key to this makeup's success - you didn't treat it with kid gloves or too much reverence. Was that the case?

Interesting observation. I did read your comments and whilst it never ocurred to me in that way, it could be a fair point. Call me a greenhorn but I was never aware of the 850 until they brought it back recently. We simply thought the shoe had some potential, especially since the lightweight angle really elevates the shoe, at least in my eyes, way above the 575 for example. The 1500 will always be the go-to shoe for NB heads but our general policy is to try and break new styles or directions and the 850 def falls into that category. All we had to compare it to were the original half dozen 850 colours that were in the range. What I did suggest was the addition of extra padding to the tongue and heel. The shoe now sits upright and if you get the laces just right, you can slip it on and off without messing with them. It just looks a lot tastier as well... that part I was very happy with.

Did you ever own any sneakers that incorporated kangaroo before? It can't be cheap to source...

Never...although I am very familiar with the leather being used in football boots. I’m sure it’s not cheap like some of the flimsy shit that gets used on sneakers these days, but that’s the nice thing about our shoe. We also had a reason to use that leather, for obvious reasons, because it added a humorous dimension that whilst a tad nostalgic from my own point of view, enabled us to have a giggle in a year where no one in the industry has been laughing much, especially the 10% who are now in some other form of employment. I had a lot of positive comments from people at other brands who said it restored their confidence in the idea of having fun with sneakers.

There’s a lot of cynicism about and many turncoats are jumping off the bandwagon as quickly as they jumped on. I wouldn’t say it was an exceptionally good year, but it wasn’t all bad either. I might point out that in Issue 17 of Sneaker Freaker which just dropped, there’s some incredible stuff that’s helped restore my confidence in the direction of several brands.

Did you have to contend with anyone going "Aaah, not cuddly little kangaroos" when you suggested that leather? Even we know that they're vicious buggers - there was a story in the paper about a farmer and his dog that got attacked just the other week.

Not at all. It’s funny for Australians because the last thing we think of kangaroos as being is ‘cuddly and little’. A big bull roo can easily be over 8 feet tall and with hind legs like steel springs he’ll kick your head off if he doesn’t like the look of you. We have hundreds of millions of them on the loose and anyone who drives on rural roads has big ‘roo bars’ to protect their vehicle. If you hit a roo at 100 miles an hour only two things can happen. The first is that your car will be definitely be a write-off. The second is that they’ll either go over the roof or the worst case scenario is that they’ll come into the car through the wind screen. If that happens you need to either have a weapon ready to club them to death instantly or they’ll thrash around and you’ll be julienned into a human salad.

I have to also admit to channeling some nutty zeitgeist action as well. It seems like the last 6 months there has been kangaroo action in the news constantly. First they made a doco about the Skippy TV show. Then the actual park where the show was made closed down for various offences. Recently a crisp manufacturer made some kangaroo flavored chips that caused a few animal lovers some angst. The story you’re talking about concerned a farmer who fought off a kangaroo with his bare hands as it tried to drown his cattle dog in a dam. He ended up in hospital with serious scratches all over his body and a weird story to tell his grandkids.

It's interesting that the original 850 makeup never worked for you. We love those colours, but I guess that's because they represent a '90s departure from a more muted NB colour palette. Are you more of a fan of more neutral shades on a shoe like this?

I thought the OG colourway was pretty good, but the other 5 or 6 versions had essentially the same blocking and it seemed a bit repetitive to me, especially as they all had white midsoles. I have to say the 850 materials were a bit on the poor side as well. Like most things, it’s sometimes better to work with underdeveloped raw materials. Can you imagine doing an Air Force now? You’re up against thousands of competitors. But overall, I think about a million things when designing a shoe. We put an enormous amount of thought into every possible angle, but the basic foundation is that whatever we do has to be aesthetically relevant to the model. Otherwise you’re jamming two things together that really should be kept apart, much like Posh and Becks.

When it comes to a Sneaker Freaker SMU, is it a collective effort? Do you have a roundtable discussion? Or do you bark orders at a Photoshop monkey?

I’m quite partial to barking orders but all our colabs are a joint effort. On the NBs I worked with Jimmy Rogers who is our resident graphic designer. We both create a stack of colours and keep working til something sticks. We then let it ferment a little and make any revisions that come to mind. It’s my job to come up with the story telling and execute whatever promotional concepts we can come up with, which from our point of view, is an essential part of the equation.

You've given us sharkskin, kangaroo leather...funnel-web shell sneakers next?

Ha! As everybody knows we have a lot of deadly critters here and some of them must have some weird leather we can hijack next. I thought the shark story was a cracker, and now we’ve done the roo shoes, so it’ll be interesting to see how we handle our next colab. We have a few projects on the go and to be honest, I have no idea which one will make it to market first. The last thing we want to do is repeat ourselves, but I think we’ll keep pursuing a humourous direction and try to enhance our Australian credentials even more. Everyone likes a local story, you just have to make sure it’s deadly or you’ll look like a tit.