Buzz
In February 1993, when 7-year-old Jessica Little from Ripley, Tennessee, disappeared, the situation quickly sparked fear. Little had wandered off in pursuit of her dog, Coco. After she failed to return, her parents alerted the authorities, and a search party was dispatched to comb the area where she was thought to have gone. The thick, tall grass made locating her challenging, and as the light began to fade, 200 volunteers worked harder to search the vast field.
Suddenly, a flickering orange-red light emerged in the pasture. It was Jessica Little’s sneakers. Sporting a pair of LA Gear’s light-up shoes, a signature product of the ‘90s, each step she took triggered an LED light to flash, making her small figure visible to the searchers in the increasingly difficult conditions.
The media attention surrounding Little’s rescue played a crucial role in propelling LA Gear’s sneakers into the spotlight, leading to millions of units sold. However, the fame would soon be followed by a wave of negative publicity that no one had foreseen. While the shoes had helped save Jessica Little, some argued that they posed a potential hazard to countless other children.
Getting Ready to Move
For Gen Z, the mention of LA Gear might cause some confusion. However, for Gen X, Millennials, and even some Baby Boomers, the brand is a key part of the 1980s and early 1990s. If you ever wore a Starter jacket or played with a slap bracelet, LA Gear likely rings a bell.
LA Gear emerged from the aerobics craze of the 1980s. Robert Greenberg, a Boston-based entrepreneur who had worked in various businesses from hair salons to denim jeans, came up with the idea of combining skates and sneakers to ride the wave of roller-skating’s popularity. When that trend fizzled out, Greenberg adapted and shifted LA Gear into a lifestyle brand tailored to fitness enthusiasts and their unique fashion choices. While Greenberg is often credited as the company’s founder, marketing executive Sandy Saemann is sometimes cited as a co-founder by outlets like Ad Age. He decorated the shoes with sequins and tassels, and LA Gear was born. (The brand name reportedly came from an employee who overheard someone talking about their “real LA gear” clothes.)
Greenberg found a profitable niche. While sneaker brands were fiercely competing in the men’s athletics sector with iconic figures like Michael Jordan leading the charge, Greenberg saw a gap in the women’s athletic shoe market. His intuition paid off. Focused on a laid-back coastal lifestyle, LA Gear soared from $11 million in sales to $617 million in just four years, landing third place in overall sales behind Nike and Reebok. Along with recruiting sports stars, Greenberg brought in celebrities such as Belinda Carlisle, Paula Abdul, and even Michael Jackson to promote both men’s and women’s performance and fashion shoes. Notably, Jackson even agreed to physically hold an LA Gear shoe in a commercial—something he had never done for any other brand.
But the aerobics lifestyle wasn’t built for longevity. As sales began to dip in the late 1980s, Greenberg tried to expand into the broader sports market, but with only limited success. By 1990, LA Gear had 11 million unsold shoes sitting in inventory, with their appeal diminishing as retailers slashed prices. That same year, a pair of Gears worn by a Marquette University basketball player fell apart during a game—one of two dozen similar incidents in college basketball—undermining consumer trust in the brand’s performance. By 1992, Greenberg stepped down as chairman and CEO, with investors led by Roy Disney (Walt Disney’s nephew) seeking to revive the company’s fortunes.
Greenberg went on to establish Skechers footwear. LA Gear, however, needed its own comeback story.
By mid to late 1992, the company had a breakthrough. The sneaker industry was swept up in a tech craze, incorporating microchips that could track performance and other high-tech features: Reebok’s Pump, for example, promised custom inflation. LA Gear faced backlash for releasing a Pump imitation called the Regulator and began developing a sneaker with lights, a concept patented by Canadian inventor Nicholas Rodgers in 1989. (LA Gear obtained the technology through an intermediary.)
The shoes featured diodes in the heels that activated with movement, similar to bicycle safety lights. While the feature had potential safety benefits in low-light conditions, it was clear that kids were drawn to the novelty—light-up sneakers were simply cool.
LA Gear marketed the light-up shoes under a range of names: LA Tech, Light Tech, LA Lights, Leap Gear, Lumitex, Galacticas (for boys), Twilight (for girls), Nightcrawler (for babies), and even My Li’l Lights. (For simplicity, we’ll refer to them as LA Lights.) Some pairs had tiny lights along the sides, but most featured a block of light in the heel. The LEDs were guaranteed for just four months in the kids’ version, though adults could remove the lights and purchase replacements with new batteries for $2.50 each.
Despite the limited lifespan of the lights, kids eagerly sought out the sneakers. LA Lights sold out rapidly in 1992 and into the 1993 holiday season, with consumers either excited about the sneakers’ “coolness” or shocked by the high price (up to $80 per pair, roughly $174 today).
“It’s the hottest shoe we’ve got,” said a shoe salesperson in Sherman Oaks, California, adding that the store can’t keep them on the shelves.
“Customers can’t get enough of them,” a manager at Stride Rite shoes in Tampa Bay, Florida, said. “It far surpasses any other shoe I carry. We doubled our order, sold out, and are now on our third re-order. At one point, the company was sold out all the way back to the factory.”
The company also kicked off an extensive marketing campaign, featuring illuminated store displays and a series of TV commercials. In one, kids playing basketball in their LA Lights are mistaken for a flying saucer; others end with the tagline “Gotta own the light if you wanna own the night.”
The shoes garnered the kind of publicity that money can’t buy. Beyond 7-year-old Jessica Little, the sneakers played a key role in the capture of an alleged drug dealer who fled from police on foot in Charles City, Virginia, in April 1993. He ran off under the cover of darkness, but thanks to his LA Lights, police quickly closed in on 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 on the brink of a major comeback. However, by 1994, the innovative mechanism that powered the sneakers’ lights became the center of significant controversy. While LA Lights were certainly trendy by 1990s standards, some feared they could pose a potential danger to the public.
Banned
The kid version of LA Lights presented an engineering dilemma for LA Gear. While adults’ body weight was enough to trigger the lights, it didn’t work the same way for children. To solve this, LA Gear decided to use mercury to activate the diodes.
Mercury is a hazardous substance that can cause health problems upon exposure. For example, mercury poisoning can occur from consuming contaminated fish or inhaling vapors. All forms of mercury are toxic, but it is especially harmful to the nervous systems of children and pregnant women. Each kid-sized pair of LA Lights contained 0.5 grams of mercury inside a sealed plastic tube, which would move and trigger the lights when disturbed by motion.
When concerns were raised, LA Gear moved quickly to dismiss any claims that the mercury in the sneakers posed a health risk to the wearer. “A lot of misinformation has confused consumers, and consumers are our lifeblood,” 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.”
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the agency responsible for overseeing consumer goods, corroborated this finding. Their tests on LA Lights found no evidence of harm to children—due to the plastic seal being practically unbreakable, there was no need for a government recall.
However, the sneakers remained problematic. A discarded pair of LA Lights was considered hazardous waste, requiring proper disposal. Since mercury doesn’t break down in the environment, Minnesota and Wisconsin took measures by banning the sale of the shoes. Minnesota’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against LA Gear for not alerting consumers about the mercury, and the state even threatened a $700 fine for anyone selling or improperly disposing of the shoes. LA Gear stopped shipments to Wisconsin before the ban came into effect. Given that kids outgrew shoes quickly and the diodes had a limited lifespan, many ended up in landfills.
To address the issue, LA Gear contributed $70,000 to help Minnesota with disposal efforts. They also set up a toll-free hotline allowing consumers to receive a free, postage-paid box to send back their shoes for safe disposal. The company removed the mercury from the shoes and donated the cleaned-out pairs to charity. However, the hotline didn’t offer refunds or exchanges. LA Gear phased out the mercury-based design and released a newer version using a metal spring to activate the electrical circuit.
It’s unclear whether the mercury controversy accelerated the decline of LA Lights or if the shoes were simply fading out as a trend. While the sneakers continued selling throughout the 1990s, they were increasingly overshadowed by athletic shoes endorsed by icons like Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal. In either case, LA Gear shifted focus to other models, such as the color-changing Grafx and LCD-equipped Neonz, but received minimal attention. The company eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998.
Since then, LA Gear has changed ownership several times but still exists today. The brand offers retro apparel and contemporary products, such as pickleball shoes. In a nod to its iconic past, LA Gear even offers an updated version of the LA Tech shoe featuring an illuminated heel.
