Kid Lit: When LA Gear’s LA Lights Sneakers Created a Frenzy

When 7-year-old Jessica Little of Ripley, Tennessee, went missing in February 1993, it was easy for people to fear the worst. Little had wandered off after her dog, Coco. When she didn’t return, her parents phoned the police. Authorities quickly dispatched a search party to comb the cow pasture where Little was believed to have gone after her pet. Tall grass made spotting her difficult. Particularly worrisome was the fact that it was getting dark, which made exploring the area harder for the 200 people who had volunteered for the job.

All of a sudden, a bright orange-reddish light appeared in the pasture, flickering on and off. It was Jessica Little—more specifically, Jessica Little’s sneakers. She was wearing a pair of light-up shoes from LA Gear, one of the most prominent footwear brands of the 1990s. Each step triggered an LED light on the back of her heels to flash, making her tiny frame visible to searchers in an otherwise murky maze.

The resulting publicity over Little was one of the many factors that helped make LA Gear’s sneakers a smash hit, with millions of pairs sold. But the brand would soon have to endure a wave of bad press that no one could have anticipated. The kicks may have saved Jessica Little, but some argued they were putting millions of other kids in danger.

Gearing Up

For Gen Z, invoking LA Gear will probably result in confusion. But for Gen X, Millennials, and even some Baby Boomers, the brand is part of the fabric of the 1980s and early 1990s. If you sported a Starter jacket or a slap bracelet, chances are you’re familiar with LA Gear.

The brand came out of the aerobics craze of the 1980s. Robert Greenberg, an entrepreneurial go-getter from Boston, had made money in everything from hair salons to wig importing to denim jeans when he was struck by the idea of offering combination skates and sneakers to capitalize on the roller-skating phenomenon of the early 1980s. When that fad proved short-lived, Greenberg pivoted to a lifestyle brand that appealed to fitness enthusiasts and their questionable sense of style. (Greenberg is often credited as the founder of LA Gear, though some outlets, like Ad Age, cite marketing executive Sandy Saemann as a co-founder.) He adorned athletic shoes in sequins and tassels and dubbed the entire operation LA Gear. (The name came from an employee who had overheard someone boasting of her “real LA gear” apparel.)

Greenberg had found a good niche. At the time, sneaker companies were competing head-to-head in the men’s athletics category, a foot race that enlisted the likes of Michael Jordan and other marquee sports heroes. Greenberg correctly believed the market for women’s athletic shoes was underserved, and his gamble paid off. With a focus on a leisurely coastal lifestyle, LA Gear went from $11 million in sales to $617 million in just four years, taking third position in overall sales behind Nike and Reebok. While he featured sports stars, he also recruited celebrities like Belinda Carlisle, Paula Abdul, and Michael Jackson as spokespeople to peddle both men’s and women’s performance and fashion shoes. (Jackson even agreed to physically hold his own LA Gear shoe in a commercial, something he had never previously done for a product endorsement.)

But aerobics as a lifestyle wasn’t built to last. When sales began to dip in the late 1980s, Greenberg tried to pivot into the general sports market and had only mixed success. By 1990, 11 million pairs of shoes were sitting idle in inventory, their cache diminishing with each retailer price cut. That same year, a pair of Gears worn by a Marquette University basketball player literally fell apart on the court. It was one of two dozen such incidents in college ball, shaking consumer confidence that the line was up to high-performance athletic standards. In 1992, Greenberg opted to step down as chairman and chief executive. By that point, LA Gear had investors led by Roy Disney (Walt's nephew), who were looking to bolster profits.

Greenberg went on to found Skechers footwear. LA Gear needed a redemption story of its own.

In mid to late 1992, the company saw the proverbial light. The sneaker industry was in a tech frenzy, incorporating microchips that might log performance and other gimmicky features: Reebok’s Pump promised custom inflation. LA Gear was scolded for marketing a Pump knock-off dubbed the Regulator and began pursuing a sneaker that could light up, an idea patented by Canadian Nicholas Rodgers in 1989. (LA Gear acquired the technology via an intermediary.)

The heels of the shoes contained diodes that activated when the wearer was walking or running, making them something like bicycle safety lights. While they could conceivably help with visibility in lower-light conditions, it was clear the feature would appeal to kids regardless of any practical purpose: Light-up sneakers were just cool.

LA Gear marketed the concept under a dizzying array of names: LA Tech, Light Tech, LA Lights, Leap Gear, Lumitex, Galacticas (for young boys), Twilight (for young girls), Nightcrawler (for infants), and even My Li’l Lights. (For simplicity’s sake, we’ll refer to them as LA Lights.) Some sported tiny, illuminated dots along the sides of the shoes, but most featured a block of light in the heel. The LEDs were guaranteed for just four months in the kid version, though adults could remove the lights and buy additional ones with new batteries for $2.50 each.

That questionable shelf life did little to deter kids from coveting the sneaker. LA Lights sold out at retailers quickly in 1992 and into the 1993 holiday season, with consumers raving—either about the sneaker’s cool factor or about the exorbitant price (up to $80 per pair, depending on size, or about $174 today).

“It’s the hottest shoe we have,” said one shoe salesperson in Sherman Oaks, California, adding that the store can’t keep them in stock.

“[Customers] can’t get enough of them,” a manager for Stride Rite shoes in Tampa Bay, Florida, said. “It far exceeds any other shoe I have. We bought a double order and sold it, and we now have our third re-order coming in. At one time, the company was sold out all the way back to the factory.”

The company also launched a marketing blitz, including store displays that lit up and a series of commercials. In one, a bunch of kids playing basketball in their LA Lights get mistaken for a flying saucer; others end with the tagline “Gotta own the light if you wanna own the night.”

The shoes received the kind of publicity that you can’t buy. In addition to 7-year-old Jessica Little, the sneakers played a prominent role in the capture of an alleged drug dealer who fled on foot from police in Charles City, Virginia, in April 1993. He sprinted away under cover of darkness, but thanks to his LA Lights, police quickly caught up to him.

“Every time he took a step, we knew exactly where he was,” a sheriff’s department investigator told the press.

The success of the shoes had investors wondering if LA Gear was about to make a long-term comeback. But come 1994, the unique mechanism by which the sneakers lit up became a source of major controversy. While LA Lights were indeed stylish by 1990s standards, some believed they were also a possible danger to the public.

Banned

When it came to the kid version of LA Lights, LA Gear had a kind of engineering problem. In adults, body weight was sufficient to trigger the lights. In kids, it wasn’t. So LA Gear opted to trigger the diodes by using mercury.

Mercury is an environmental element that can cause health issues upon exposure. People may suffer from mercury poisoning, for example, when eating contaminated fish or breathing in vapors. All mercury is considered toxic, though it’s especially damaging to the nervous systems of children and pregnant women. Each LA Lights sneaker sized for kids contained 0.5 grams of mercury in a sealed plastic tube that, when jostled by motion, would move and activate the diodes.

When the concern was raised, LA Gear was quick to dispel any notion that the mercury in the sneakers could pose any health risk to the wearer. “There has been a lot of misinformation that has confused consumers, and consumers are our life,” LA Gear president Mark Goldston told The Chicago Tribune in 1994. “These products pose absolutely no health risk … there is virtually no way for the mercury to escape.”

This was corroborated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the government agency tasked with monitoring consumer products. The CPSC’s test of LA Lights revealed no potential harm to kids—it was not practically possible to break the plastic seal—so no government recall was warranted.

But the sneakers were still considered problematic. A discarded pair was, in a sense, toxic waste—and toxic waste requires specific and measured disposal. (Mercury does not break down in the environment.) Minnesota and Wisconsin went so far as to ban the sale of the shoes, citing them as a hazard that needed to be appropriately handled; Minnesota’s attorney general also filed a lawsuit against LA Gear for failing to inform consumers about the mercury, with the state also threatening a $700 fine for anyone caught selling or improperly disposing of the shoes. (The company stopped shipping shoes to Wisconsin before the ban took effect.) Because kids outgrew shoes and the diodes had a shelf life, there was no question that some were headed for the landfill.

In response to concerns, LA Gear paid $70,000 to Minnesota to help fund disposal in the state; they also set up a toll-free hotline for consumers to arrange for a free, postage-paid box to be sent to them that would permit LA Gear to receive and dispose of the sneakers in an environmentally sound manner. The company stripped out the mercury and then donated the snuffed-out shoes to charity. (The hotline did not, however, provide for any refunds or exchanges.) LA Gear also phased out the shoes with the mercury by offering a newer version that used a metal spring that completed an electrical circuit when jostled.

It’s hard to say whether the mercury controversy hastened the decline of LA Lights or whether the shoes were nearing the end of their faddish existence. Though they continued to sell through the 1990s, the sneakers were increasingly ignored by consumers in favor of athletic footwear endorsed by Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal. In either case, LA Gear moved to other sneakers, including the color-changing Grafx and the LCD-equipped Neonz, but to little fanfare. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998.

In the years since, LA Gear has changed ownership hands several times but persists today. The brand offers retro apparel and more contemporary lines, like pickleball footwear. In a nod to its heyday, the brand even sells an LA Tech shoe with an illuminated heel.

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