I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that Puma just launched the Cell Meio for fall. They’re some fancy kicks that tout a style-plus-performance package with a “dress shoe-inspired upper” (ours looked like synthetic snakeskin) and the visible inverse duo-CELL technology (jump for the technical stuff). Plus, they’ve got three special-edition versions inspired by the Puma-sponsored Olympic teams from Jamaica, Morocco, and Sweden. Props for timeliness.
The bad news is they didn’t fare well in the trial run. First, I struggled to slide on the rigid sneakers. Chalk it up to new-shoe stiffness, right? To give them a fair shot, I wore them all evening—a little cleaning around the house, a quick walk with the dog, then off to a friend’s house to watch The Bachelorette (hi JJ!). But by the time I arrived at said friend’s house, I couldn’t feel my big toes. Trial run, over. To be fair, they were a half-size too big. But wouldn’t that mean more toe room?
Moral of the story: Say I were to get caught in a blizzard and lose my big toes to frostbite. Then I’d totally wear these sneaks.
Here’s the promised “technical stuff.” The inverse duo-CELL technology is a twist on Puma’s original duo-CELL technology. The cushioning cells are flipped upside down then relocated from the external midsole to the outsole. Each cell reacts independently to the ground, with the smaller cells depressing into the larger cells with each step.
