Soft Star Youth Swift Shoe Review

The awesome people at Soft Star, (well they call themselves elves), sent my seven year old boy Paxton, (AKA: P-Fox, Pax, Ninja Fox, Best Bud, ‘The Boy’), a sweet pair of their newly designed Soft Star Youth Swift shoes. Out of the box like most kids he wouldn’t wear them for more than something like 2.5 seconds. It might have been less. He got all crazy about how the back of the shoe – the heel cup – rubbed against his heel. Well Soft Star, being as awesome as previously mentioned, took care of this problem immediately and sent him another pair with a thinner heel pad inside the back of the shoe. (I was just going to shave off some of his calcaneus.)

Well wouldn’t you know it, but he had an issue with this newer and thinner pad too for two reasons: 1) The fact that the pad wasn’t completely removed and he can still feel it and see it. 2) The fact that the pad was blue on the very top. Yeah, I wish I was joking, but sadly, (very sadly), I am not. The thing is that the pad needs to be in there to hold stuff together – it’s already so minimal as it is. But try telling that to a seven year old. He just figured they should be using Gorilla Glue or Duct Tape as those products fix and hold together just about anything. I mean who has ever used a thin little pad to hold something together? This is craziness. Let’s move on…

…So I have the pleasure of having to report this “problem” back to Soft Star, who have already gone out of their way to try to please this kid not once, but twice. Well they’re super concerned as any great company would be and want to know what they can do to fix it. So I think they did something like send their Master Elves to some week-long Advanced Elf Training Camp in the North Pole just to try to get this issue straightened out. Luckily during their days there of mastering new algorithms of how shoes fit a picky 7-year old kid, he had to put the Youth Swifts on. Hey – the other shoes he was wearing were wet and you can’t go to school barefoot. (Well you can, but it’s kinda frowned upon.) What-do-ya-know but the Soft Star Youth Swift shoes magically, (and by magically I am referring back to the magic of elves), fit. I would love to tell you that he also rode a unicorn to school that day but that would be a stretch but I’m pretty sure there was a rainbow out that day – somewhere. So that was last week and he’s pretty much worn them every day since.

The new Youth Swift Shoes come in three colors – chocolate (that’s brown – so we’re not talking some Paleo 85% cacao content here), purple/ocean, and red/black. Hey – did you notice that Ninja Fox’s shoes are black? Well I can’t figure that one out either. You can however, go crazy and design your own shoes for only $15 more – just click this link.

Pax got the shoes with the 5mm Vibram Trail sole but they also have a 2mm Street style too. They’re super durable and yeah they got a little heel pad that is probably going to be some color which may drive your kid nuts too. Enjoy that.

As with all Soft Star shoes, they’re made from natural, non-toxic leather colored with food grade dye. I don’t think you can actually eat them, but it sure sounds like you can. The toe box is wide, so your kid’s toes can flex and grip and splay when they move around while their classmates trip in their pointy little footwear. And of course, they’re designed and made by hand in Corvallis, Oregon with US-sourced materials.

That’s my/our Soft Star Youth Swift Shoe Review. Hopefully this was much more entertaining than any other shoe review you’ve read. If you’ve read my review of the Soft Star DASH RunAmoc you already know that I love Soft Star shoes, and the kids’ shoes are no different. Thanks Soft Star for putting up with us. 🙂
 

Dr. Stephen Gangemi "Sock Doc"

I'm a board-certified chiropractic physician and clinical nutritionist with a passion for true natural health care. I implement dietary & nutritional therapies, exercise & movement practices, and lifestyle changes along with manual therapy techniques to help the body heal and prevent illness and injuries.