Tenkaippin, or Ten’ichi as fans call it, is a ramen restaurant chain in Japan. Ten’ichi has over 230 locations across the country, as well as one in Hawaii. And now, it also has collab sneakers.
We’ve seen collabs with Dragon Ball, Gundam, and Animal Crossing. Those kinds of collabs seem typical! I believe this is the first one I’ve seen with a noodle restaurant.
French sporting equipment brand Le Coq Sportif has joined forces with Japanese ramen Tenkaippin chain to make these officially branded sneakers.
The sneaker mark the 50th anniversary of the first Ten’ichi, which was founded as a ramen stall by Tsutomu Kimura near the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto in 1971. Kimura opened his first bricks-and-mortar Ten’ichi restaurant in August 1975 and then established the ramen restaurant chain in 1981. It’s become one of Japan’s more ubiquitous noodle chains — so much so that it now has its own limited edition shoes.
These sneakers, Le Coq Sportif’s LCS R model, were designed with the restaurant’s ramen in mind. For example, the beige colour echoes Ten’ichi famous, thick soup broth. The green represents green onions, while the laces are supposed to look like ramen noodles and the red accents represent ramen bowls. While I’m not sure if I actually like the shoes or not, that’s pretty cool that the different colours represent different parts of a bowl of ramen.
What’s more, Le Coq Sportif’s logo is a roaster and on the back heel tab it’s depicted a chicken bones, making a further nod to ramen chicken bone broth.
Clever, no?
The shoes also come in a special box, and to be honest, for a walking Ten’ichi advertisement, you have to admire all the thought that went into these shoes.
Priced at 14,300 yen (A$167), the sneakers will go on sale November 10.
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