The Air Jordan IV (4) was released in 1989.
Michael kept on playing in a confident and dominating way and won numerous honors and awards.
The design, by Mr. Hatfield, wasn't as revolutionary as the previous designs and kept a lot of the feeling from the third model. The Air Jordan shoes had started to get major popularity by now and sold out every here and there.
Spike likes Mike
When it came to commercials Nike continued with Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee) and created the famous Can/Can't tv commercial. Spike Lee really liked these shoes personally and gave them some extra promotion in his movie Do The Right Thing.
A classic scene for all AJ fans is when one of the persons in the movie gets his brand new AJ IV's scuffed by a bicycle rider and flips out about it, places his shoe upon a fire-hydrant and cleans it with a toothbrush. Rent the movie today if you haven't seen it!!!
Retro negative trend changes
When the IV's were retro'd 1999 in white/black and black/cement grey it was crazy. Stores sold out after a few hours and everyone seemed to want a pair. As you can see a totally different approach to when the I's, II's and III's were first retroed.
Nike, or Jordan Brand, realized that this was a golden opportunity to cash in so they started releasing so called Retro+ models. These had a similar design to the original but featured new colors or some minor design changes.
There has been different reactions to the Retro+ models and not all of them have been positive but they seemed to sell pretty well so probably most people were happy with them.
Three years of new retro's
2004, 2005 and 2006 all saw new retro releases of the Air Jordan IV. 2004 featured new Retro+ colors in White/Green and Cool Grey. Cool Grey starting to be a standard Air Jordan retro color following the success of the Cool Grey Air Jordan XI.
UNDFTD
2005 saw the release of two very special releases of the Air Jordan IV. The first one was the IV UNDFTD.
Only 72 pairs made with a design inspired by the MA-1 Flight Jacket.
The sneaker store UNDFTD ran a raffle and auction (that both started on June 23, 2005) to give a chance for people to get their hands on a pair of these.
Raffle tickets were attached to t-shirts available from UNDFTD (Los Angeles), UNDFTD (Santa Monica), Real Mad Hectic (Tokyo), Union (NYC), and Foot Patrol (London) and entered the buyer into the raffle with a 1 in 50 chance of winning a pair. The raffle was drawn on July 1, 2005, and the auction ended on July 16, 2005.
Laser
The other special retro IV in 2005 was laser etched. Using the same technology used on the Air Jordan XX, these pairs were given a very unique look, to say the least...
The White/Varsity Red-Black laser IV's were an online exclusive and was sold together with a matching hat and t-shirt.
Mars
In 2006 a huge number of retro IV's were released. Most of them were retro+ and only two original colors were released. As with most other later retro releases they did not feature the Nike Air in the back, but a Jumpman instead - a fact that made most AJ fans frown. Something that made the AJ fans happy though, was the fact that the back and the lace holders were made in plastic, opposed to the retro+ releases that were in leather.
The White/Varsity Red-Black 2006 retro also featured a small Mars Blackmon icon and the shoe was consequently nicknamed "Mars IV's".
