WARRIOR

In my schooldays, the most popular choice of school shoes were a pair of Warrior.

If you don't have any idea what Warrior is (or was, for that matter), its the most favourite school shoes in in the whole of Malaysia in the 80's. High cut or low cut, it came in 3 different colours, which were dark blue, black and white. It cheap, and cost just RM 13.00.

Warrior shoes were very comfortable to wear, and it matched whatever pants you put on, regardless if its a denim, slacks and the standard green school pants (or in our case white school pants). We wore Warrior to almost any event, and used it playing almost every games.

Bazaar Bulat, was the place to buy it, since we could easily haggled the price down. RM 1.00 or RM 2.00 less than the original price was a very big deal for us then since with that kind of money could buy us a 65 cents movie ticket. Although, with that price the seats allocated were in the very front row of the cinema hall, and watching the movie in a straight upwards sitting positions from such a short distance usually left us with a strained and stiff neck.

Warrior were not worn only by schoolboys, girls loved it too. While eating out in Taman Kanak-kanak (a favourite place to hang out and makan in Ipoh) and, those girls from MGS or Raja Perempuan with their long baju kurung school uniform would show off their Warriors, sometimes exposing just enough to reveal their red or pink shoe laces. Being boys, we were left wondering of course, if there was more to that.

Some of my more creative friends, patched leathers to their Warrior shoes, to make it more cool and unique. Some replaced their Warrior white shoe laces with other colours to give it a stand out look.

If my memories serves me right, Warrior, fade out of the school shoes scene during the early 90's.

I am not sure what happened. I know I still wore a pair of Warrior when I was in college in the early 90's.

Surfing the web, I found that Warrior shoes are still alive and kicking, albeit with a different look and design.

For those who wish to re live their glory years, the website add is as follows.

http://www.warriorshoes.com/

I am sure it'll brings back memories, where perhaps, Warrior was THE shoes you wore on your first real date with a girl. I know I was.

And the girl too.