Air Jordan 1 × Gatorade: The Pack That Turned Four Flavours Into a Grail

The Air Jordan 1 has been paired with a lot of things over the years. Gatorade is still one of the strangest, and one of the best. In December 2017, Jordan Brand released the "Gatorade" Pack: four Air Jordan 1 Retro High OGs, each one a straight lift from a bottle in the fridge. Orange Peel. Blue Lagoon. Rush Violet, standing in for Grape. Cyber, standing in for Lemon-Lime. No colour-blocking, no secondary panels fighting for attention. Just one flavour, head to toe. Why Gatorade, of all things This wasn't a random crossover. Michael Jordan's relationship with Gatorade goes back to 1991 and the "Be Like Mike" campaign, one of the most effective sports ads ever made and the reason an entire generation wanted to drink the same bright blue liquid their hero did. Jordan Brand returning to Gatorade decades later wasn't chasing a trend. It was closing a loop that had been open since before most people buying the shoes were born. That's the part that makes the pack work. It isn't a logo slapped on a Jordan 1 for the sake of a collab. The shoe already had the licence to do this.

The ad that started it all "Be Like Mike" first aired on 8 August 1991, and it wasn't built around a song anyone already knew. Ad executive Bernie Pitzel wanted to use "I Wanna Be Like You" from Disney's The Jungle Book, couldn't get the rights, and wrote his own lyrics instead. Ira Antelis and Steve Shafer composed the music — kids and adults singing together about wanting to play like Jordan, over an upbeat, almost gospel-choir backing track. It didn't move much Gatorade off shelves at the time. What it did do was turn Jordan into the kind of superstar people didn't just admire, but wanted to be, and it's been named one of the best sports commercials ever made in the decades since.

The pack wasn't the end of it, either Jordan Brand finished what this started a year later. In December 2018, the "Be Like Mike" collection got its finale: a full Gatorade-flavoured Air Jordan 1 restock, and — more fittingly — a Gatorade Air Jordan 6. The 6 isn't a random pick: it's the exact model Jordan was wearing in 1991, the same year the original advert aired and the year he won his first championship. That AJ6 went all green with orange detailing, a squeeze-bottle-shaped lace lock standing in for the usual shark-tooth design, and "If I could be" — straight from the commercial's own lyrics — embroidered on the tongue. Of the two shoes, the AJ1 pack is the one people actually wear. The AJ6 is the one that understood the assignment.

The details that sell it Each pair keeps the upper monochromatic — tumbled leather in the flavour's exact shade, no contrast stitching to break it up. The only concession to branding is a small Gatorade lightning bolt on the lateral side, subtle enough that you could miss it from across a room, plus a small orange hangtag swinging from a ball-chain pull on the ankle zip. The outsole is where it gets properly fun. It's translucent, and underneath it sits a full Gatorade logo, visible every time you take a step. It's a small, slightly ridiculous detail, and it's exactly the kind of thing that turns a solid colourway into one people still talk about eight years later.

The packaging doubles down, too Jordan Brand didn't stop at the shoes. Each pair ships in an orange box stamped with a "M/KE" wordmark and a lightning bolt on the lid — lift it off and "Be Like Mike" is printed across the inside, in case the shoes themselves hadn't made the reference clear enough. The set also included a small Gatorade-and-Jumpman towel, the kind of extra most packs don't bother with — Foot Locker's Hollywood flagship, which got the pack a week early with only 23 pairs per colourway, reportedly threw in a branded Gatorade bottle on top for early buyers.

Four flavours, one favourite The full pack released nationwide on 26 December 2017 at $175 a pair. Ask four different people which one's best and you'll get four different answers, which is sort of the point of a pack like this. Orange Peel is the loudest and the one that photographs best — it's basically impossible to miss on foot. Blue Lagoon and Cyber both lean into that late-2010s neon moment without feeling dated now, which isn't true of everything from that era. Rush Violet is the one most likely to get worn with something other than shorts, since purple is doing a lot more outfit-matching work than neon orange ever will. The NextSole verdict: a genuinely great idea, let down by nobody being brave enough to wear all four at once. Which flavour would you have gone for?