Rapper Lil Nas Xs and MSCHF teamed up to release their first set of shoes, dubbed the “Satan Shoes,” whose sales were quickly blocked by Nike. Nike received backlash for allowing the two groups to make these “controversial kicks.” Nike has denied the endorsement claims and sued Lil Nas X and MSCHF over the use of their checkmark. The question about this situation is whether or not Nike should’ve blocked the sales of the shoes– and whether or not the two should’ve been sued.

I feel that Nike had all the right to block the sales of these shoes. While their sale and manufacturer was MSCHF, the shoes were modeled after Nike’s Air Max 97’s. That, accompanied with the fact that the shoe displays the Nike checkmark and that the whole design of the shoe, caused some poor responses from critics of the product, mainly from the Christian community.

One tweet by Pastor Mark Burns saying “These #SatanShoes by #Nike & #LilNasX with 666 and a drop of human blood in the sole is a reason why we Christians must be prayed up ready to battle in the spirit with the Voice of the Holy Spirit. This is evil & heresy and I pray that Christians rise up against this.”

Yes, the shoes have a real drop of blood in them mixed with a whole bunch of satanic symbols. There are an estimated 2 billion Christians in the world today, and it’s very possible that a sizable portion of these people use Nike products. They would have risked a lot to endorse these shoes and I doubt they did so. But the creation of that product slandered the company, so they had to block it to keep their reputation intact.

But I feel that the lawsuit was both justified and not justified. MSCHF was charged with violating Nike’s trademark on their logo and damaging their brand, it’s the trademark I would like to call into question. While there is no doubt that the Nike checkmark is trademarked, they failed to sue them over their other releases, such as the Jesus shoes, which were white, bore a bronze cross, and had the Nike check right on the side of the shoe. If the issue was over a trademark, they would’ve sued them when their previous shoe was produced. The next issue would be the damaging of the brand. The amount of backlash the shoes revived as well as the criticism to Nike itself is a clear indicator that this would damage their reputation. They had full right to take a product with their model shoe off of the market if they deemed it to be a danger to the company.

I’m sure many people have their opinions on this topic, you could be on team Nas or team Nike, but the bottom line is that taking these shoes off of the market and suing to make sure it can’t happen again is the best for all future shoes.