ParaNorman Promo/Friends & Family Air Raid Samples | US 12

The connection between LAIKA and Nike runs deeper than any standard cross-promotional partnership. LAIKA is headquartered outside Portland, Oregon — a short drive from Nike's Beaverton campus — and the studio is owned and operated by Travis Knight, president and CEO of LAIKA and the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight. That family and geographic tie has produced a small, quiet series of Nike promotional footwear releases timed to each of LAIKA's stop-motion features, and this Air Raid comes directly from the 2012 program built around the studio's second film, ParaNorman. LAIKA released the film in August 2012 as a darker, punk-inflected follow-up to Coraline — a horror-comedy directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler that pushed the medium into more graphic territory — and Nike's promotional pair drew its palette directly from the film's poster and character design language: black and white as the neutral ground, electric green as the zombie-and-graveyard accent that runs through the entire ParaNorman visual world.

The shoe itself runs the Tinker Hatfield Air Raid silhouette from 1992 — Nike's outdoor-basketball answer to the New York playground game, built around the crossing forefoot strap, protective toe cap, and wraparound printed midsole that anchored the model's original identity. This pair carries the black-and-white upper with electric green accents throughout the tongue, lace, and outsole treatments. Distributed exclusively through Nike's Sportswear PR channel, the pair reached its recipient one-to-one rather than through any retail counter. LAIKA × Nike promotional shoes were produced in tight numbers timed to each film's release, and pieces surfacing with their original PR packaging intact belong to a specific tier of both animation-collectible and Nike collector demand.