FJ's Verdict:

Product Name: Yankz
Company: Sporting Innovations Group
MSRP: $7.50
Availability: High (Online & Retail)
Warranty: 30 Days

Tying laces, do you remember when you first learnt how to do this? I do. Make two rabbit ears, criss cross them, loop them and then pull that shit tight. Viola! Oh no, too loose… ok untie, pull, tighten, and now let’s bring the bunny back.

Bah! What a pain in the ass that was. This is why I demanded my mom to do it for me (yes… my demands started at a young age). But now, things have gotten a lot better. I only have to ask my mom to tie my laces like, once a month, all the other times I do it by myself. I’m-a-big-kid-now!

So you can probably guess the excitement I felt after I discovered Yankz! The shoe lace system that doesn’t require any type of bunnies and shit. Just slip in your feet, tighten and go! Awesome sauce! Seemed like a dream come true, and so it was time to put it to the test, FJ style.

But first, let’s hear the official word from Yankz about their system. For those of you who don’t know, this is where I let the company toot it’s own horn

Product Claims:

Tying your shoes is a thing of the past with our unique loop system and high-impact lightweight plastic cordlock. No more tying, retying, double knots or frazzled dirty laces to mess with. Just slip on your shoe and yankz. You’re ready for action. Using the Yankz! Sure Lace System is easy, anyone can do it.

First Impressions:

I got two samples in the mail, a pair of white laces and a pair of red along with a letter from Pierce that was personally addressed to me. This is a nice little touch… and made this package stand out a little bit more than others.

Now I was excited to start this process but I was freaking out. Where the hell were the instructions?! The package said “instructions inside” and I was frantically looking for a piece of paper in there but found nothing. Seriously, I looked like a kid searching for his toy prize inside the cereal box. Then after a bit of patience… viola!

The damn thing opens up like a book, revealing the secret methods of lacing a shoe. Clever, very clever Yankz… but would it kill you to say “Open flap for instructions” instead of “Easy to follow instructions inside”. I mean, this packaging could be used as a mean ass April fools joke where some poor chump just sits there trying to figure out how to put this thing together.

As it turns out, the instructions weren’t “easy” to follow, but they weren’t exactly “hard” either. Now when it comes to instructions, I much prefer videos just like how Dynaflex did with their PowerBall where they threw in a mini cd. If there is one product that needs that kind of implementation, it would be Yankz! They should look into this.

So in my hunt for video, I went over to their site and was relieved to see that they did have a video, but that relief soon turned into mass frustration. Their flash video is so damn TINY and so low quality that it’s not worth watching, and if you want to view the high quality version, you’ll need StupidPlayer err, I mean RealPlayer. Hmm… fuck that! I’m not downloading bloat-ware. What I don’t understand is why Yankz! couldn’t upload a high quality video to YouTube and just embed that shit on their site. It’s not that hard guys… 14 year olds have figured this out.

With that aside, I was ready to really test this system out. I was going to use it with my newer shoes but then I was like, “what if it sucked?” So I decided to take my old ass pair of Adidas and make them the guinea pig. Here’s the before shot…

(Before you clowns email me, I’ll just say it: NO, my feet don’t stink!)

Also, the color combinations were in my favor… Yankz decided to send red and white laces, and while I don’t have any shoe that will wear the red, these white reflective ones were perfect!

Real World Results:

Installation took longer than I thought, 45 minutes for both shoes. Granted, the Adidas I had didn’t have traditional holes, they had hoops which were quite the bitch because each hoop was tucked under a flap, so getting the lace through them was… annoying. I’m assuming that for you guys, it shouldn’t take longer than 5 minutes per shoe.

Here’s the semi-finished product…

I realized that I had installed it a bit wrong, the loop that you see has wayy to much slack on it and didn’t look as “tight” and “secure” as it did in the picture. Surely, when I wore the shoe it felt loose, so I decided to re-arrange the lace and redistribute the un-needed slack towards the front… and herein lied the MAJOR problem with Yankz.

The laces themselves aren’t like traditional ones, they are SUPER stretchy, like an elastic band. This is annoying because to loosen up a normal shoe, what do you normally have to do? Just grab it, and pull it apart and the laces automatically spread, right? Well NOT so with Yankz. If you pull apart the shoe, the laces just stretch and whole thing just gets tighter or stays the same. This was frustrating since I had to distribute the slack by feeding the lace individually through each hoop. Retarded.

But after half an hour I had both the shoes ready to go… then it was just a matter of snipping off the excess laces and then re-feeding them through a few hoops so that they are neatly tucked away…

So how does it hold?

Fantabulously! The T-bar clip at the top has this little pin… you pull the pin and you can loosen up the loop, which relieves the ankles and allows you to slide your foot out. If you want to tighten it, you do the opposite: Slip your foot in, yank the loop till it’s tight enough then push the clip down for it to hold securely.

The T-Bar Clip

Then there is the triangular clip in the toe area. This is where the excess laces come out of. This is also adjustable, all you do is yank the lace vertically, then when you’re happy with the tension, pull it horizontally and it will be locked into place. See pics below:

Pull the lace till it’s tight enough

…then yank it horizontally so it locks into place

As for sheer performance, they rock. Plain and simple. The thing is, I don’t think that the Yankz system is THAT much faster than tying your own laces, experienced runners can tie their shit just as quickly, but what sets Yankz apart is that they will never come undone. That’s right, you know how they say “never say never”? WELL I’M SAYIN’ NEVER!

How can I be so sure? Well I put them through some serious punishment and they stayed on. I (finally) did some running on the treadmill, and they stayed put. I did some parkour and tumbling on concrete and they stayed put. And here’s my favorite one ok… I did some heavy bag kicking and they STILL stayed put.

For anyone that knows what a round-house kick looks like, you know that you usually use your instep (shoe lace) area to strike a target. Well after repeated kicks, the Yankz held on for dear life. This was the most punishing test that I could probably to put it through and it came out with flying colors. Good shit!

Conclusion:

I liked the Yankz system, but there are a few glitches that need to be addressed. The laces themselves seriously need to have less of a “stretch” factor because loosening up the shoe can be a hassle. Once everything is up and running though, it should be less of an annoyance but still… I like zero annoyance.

Then there is the packaging and presentation. Put up a DAMN YOUTUBE video and make the instructions easier to find. I hate goose chasing.

But the REAL conclusive question that I have to tackle is: Should YOU buy Yankz? Well if you’re a runner, then $7.50 is a fucking no-brainer as far as I’m concerned. I know that normal shoe laces will, at some point, come un-done and this can waste valuable seconds so why would you risk that?

But how about the non-runners? Well that’s where it gets a little mucky. If you just walk or hike then there is no real NEED to switch to Yankz. It will make your life easier but it’s more of a commodity. However, if you have kids that are learning to tie their laces or if you want an easy solution… then $7.50 is a pretty valuable investment in my opinion.

I mean seriously… I coach kids on a part time basis and I can just see the looks on the parent’s faces when the kid is taking 10 minutes to tie up their shoe. It’s pure frustration. So please, save yourself the frustration and get he hell out of the gym so the coaches can lock up and go home. Ok? Good.

Yankz Comes Highly Recommended, And For Being An Innovative Product, It Gets My…

Cheers.

- FitJerk

P.S – What do you guys think… will you be Yankin’ it?