collaboration
Spoot: Spotted Early keeps collaboration in one place: 6 stories so far. The section currently leads with “Nike and LEGO's space sneakers: a yellow Air Max Dn for kids”, “Corteiz and Nike trade secrets while the Shox R419 waits for its 2026 curtain”, and “New Balance Turns Jobs's Favorite Sneaker Into a Trail-Ready Throwback”. Bright yellow, because of course it is. Corteiz and Nike are trading secrets again, and this time the Shox R419 is the canvas. Spoot: Spotted Early New things, caught while they're still new and a little weird. Spoot finds fresh gadgets, clever inventions, crowdfunding campaigns,… The list below is every collaboration story on Spoot: Spotted Early, newest first.
Nike and LEGO's space sneakers: a yellow Air Max Dn for kids
Bright yellow, because of course it is. Nike and LEGO kicked off their in-line product collaboration in August 2025 with the LEGO x Nike Air Max Dn, a space-themed sneaker built for kids who want their basketball style to travel beyond Earth. A yellow Air Max Dn is a loud place to start, and I mean that as a compliment. It's the kind of shoe that announces itself from across the playground. What I want to know is whether the LEGO of it all lives in the details or just the colorway, and how the thing actually holds up once a kid has worn it to actual pieces. For another collaboration playing a longer game, Corteiz and Nike are trading secrets while the Shox R419 waits for its 2026 curtain. Stay spooty.
Corteiz and Nike trade secrets while the Shox R419 waits for its 2026 curtain
Corteiz and Nike are trading secrets again, and this time the Shox R419 is the canvas. The London-born streetwear label, founded by Clint, has a habit of making sneaker collabs feel like insider knowledge you were lucky to catch. Their latest is the "Game Royal" Shox R419, and it lands late 2026 for $190. That's a long wait for a shoe that already looks like it's been living in the margins of someone's sketchbook. Shox are weird, divisive, and absolutely unmistakable, which is exactly why Corteiz picked them. The blue is loud, the silhouette is stubborn, and the whole thing feels like a footnote that became the main story. If you're still catching up on sneaker surprises, our piece on the *New Balance's 991v2 Gets Colorways That Are Anything But Quiet* is worth a detour.
New Balance Turns Jobs's Favorite Sneaker Into a Trail-Ready Throwback
Steve Jobs wore the New Balance 990 like a uniform, quiet, functional, built to last. Now that same silhouette is getting muddy. New Balance has taken Jobs's favorite sneaker and turned it into a trail-ready throwback, swapping pavement for packed dirt without losing the original's blocky, early-90s soul. The question is whether a shoe famous for being comfortable on concrete can find its footing on loose rock. I'm curious about the outsole. A good tread pattern is a razor clam detail, easy to scroll past, impossible to unsee once you know what to look for. If you like brands that quietly mutate their own classics, you'll also want to read about Final's Porta headphones, a single wire and 40 grams, making headphones nearly vanish.
Spoot's not shelving this Kojima collab: it's checking if the gear holds up
A miniature piece of sci-fi equipment becomes more appealing to me when it has a job beyond occupying a shelf. The KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS x CASETiFY collab isn't just branding slapped on a phone case; it's asking whether game-world gear can survive the commute. Spoot's not shelving this one. It's checking if the hardware holds up under the weight of daily pocket life, the kind of scrutiny Hideo Kojima's obsessive design language usually escapes in a display case. The real question isn't whether the case looks like something from *Death Stranding*. It's whether it protects like one. That's the razor clam in the spec sheet: durability claims versus the actual drop test. If you're into gadgets that earn their place, this pairs well with how Analogue dug up its best retro consoles and gave them Wi-Fi.
Loewe and On drag Swiss performance tech up a Spanish mountain trail
There's a moment in any good collaboration where you stop seeing two logos and start seeing one idea. Loewe and On have found that moment on a Spanish mountain trail, dragging Swiss performance tech up a rocky slope and dressing it in heritage leather and quiet luxury. The result is a sneaker that looks like it could attend a gallery opening before it hits the switchbacks. It's not a hiking boot pretending to be fashion. It's something narrower, a shoe that trusts its technical bones enough to let Loewe's hand-stitched details and earthy palette do the talking. The real razor clam here is the restraint. They could have gone loud. They went specific.
Honor's new flagship packs a camera Arri helped shape and a battery that refuses to quit
Honor's Magic 9 Pro Max has a camera island that looks like it was machined from a 1937 Arriflex 35 turret, complete with knurled grip texture, and that alone made me sit up straighter. The battery is colossal, the mossy green finish is genuinely handsome, and Arri's influence runs deeper than aesthetics: you get LogC3 capture and 14 preset Look LUTs baked in. That's a serious tool for anyone who wants cinema color without the rig. It's also Honor's first flagship since the Arri deal went public, so the pressure was on. I'm gently skeptical about whether the software holds up, but the hardware is talking loud. For more gadget weirdness, our piece on Philips' new toothbrush tracking your brushing is a fun contrast. Stay spooty.