Tag Archives: Playstation

adidas x Carnival’s $170 Sneaker Is a Love Letter to Retro Gaming

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Somewhere between digging through a crate of old game cartridges and reaching for a solid pair of running shoes, Bangkok-based streetwear boutique CARNIVAL found its latest idea. The result is the CARNIVAL x adidas Adizero EVO SL “The Grey Console,” and it’s the kind of release that doesn’t need to try very hard to get your attention. It earns it.

The concept is straightforward but well-executed: take the familiar grey shell of a retro gaming console, the kind that sat under your TV in the early 2000s, and translate that visual language onto one of adidas’ most capable modern runners. The grey mesh upper immediately reads like vintage hardware, the color of a Nintendo 64 or an original PlayStation left to age gracefully on a shelf. It’s industrial and a little utilitarian, but it also carries a specific kind of warmth that only nostalgia can give something.

Designers: adidas x Carnival

The real conversation starts in the details. The red, yellow, green, and blue accents scattered across the eyelets and branding aren’t subtle, but they don’t need to be. Those four colors are a shared visual memory for anyone who grew up with a controller in their hands. They’re shorthand for a specific era before streaming services and mobile gaming dominated everything, when plugging in a console felt like an event. CARNIVAL didn’t over-explain the concept. They trusted the design to speak, and it does.

What makes the execution particularly sharp is how disciplined the color placement is. The multicolor hits appear along the eyelets, surfacing only when you look closely. It rewards a second look. The grey mesh has a breathable, open texture that adds depth to the upper without overcomplicating the silhouette. The branding stays restrained, letting the colorway do the storytelling rather than relying on logos to carry the concept. The overall result is a shoe that reads as athletic from across a room and as a considered design object the moment you hold it.

Performance-wise, the shoe isn’t riding purely on its references. The Adizero EVO SL runs on adidas’ LightStrike Pro foam, originally developed for elite race-day running. The midsole delivers a soft, responsive bounce without feeling excessive or gimmicky. A dimensional outsole structure aids weight transfer during a run, and the Continental™ Rubber at the forefoot adds traction that actually holds up. It’s a performance shoe doing exactly what a performance shoe should, just with a story attached to it.

That combination, a technically credible runner dressed in pure nostalgia, is what makes this collaboration feel earned rather than opportunistic. The EVO SL has built a strong collab roster with names like BAPE, Pharrell, and Hartcopy. CARNIVAL slots into that lineup not by screaming the loudest, but by being the most specific. The “Grey Console” concept doesn’t try to appeal to everyone. It targets a very particular person: one who played video games growing up, grew into someone who cares about footwear, and now finds those two worlds overlapping in a way that feels genuinely satisfying.

That specificity is exactly what separates a great collab from a forgettable one. Too many collaborations chase something broadly recognizable but ultimately hollow. The best have a point of view. CARNIVAL has always been good at this. As a Bangkok-based retailer with a loyal following across Southeast Asia, they consistently bring a cultural perspective that doesn’t feel assembled by committee. The Grey Console is personal, and that’s precisely why it lands.

At $170, it’s priced fairly for what it offers. The LightStrike Pro midsole appears in adidas race shoes that cost considerably more. You’re getting actual running capability here, not just a lifestyle silhouette with a compelling colorway bolted on. The shoe dropped on July 22, and sizes disappeared quickly. Whether a wider rollout is coming remains unclear, which makes the limited availability feel oddly appropriate for a concept this specific.

Some releases are designed to be everywhere. Some are designed for the person who immediately understands what they’re looking at. The CARNIVAL x adidas Adizero EVO SL “The Grey Console” is firmly the latter. That’s not a complaint. It’s a compliment.

The post adidas x Carnival’s $170 Sneaker Is a Love Letter to Retro Gaming first appeared on Yanko Design.

Hallmark Just Turned the Original PlayStation Into a $29 Tree Ornament

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I didn’t expect to feel anything about a $28.99 plastic ornament. Yet here we are. Hallmark’s 2026 Keepsake collection just introduced its PlayStation Console Ornament With Light and Sound, and it is exactly what it sounds like: a miniature replica of the original PlayStation, complete with a tiny matching controller sitting beside it, designed to hang on your holiday tree. Press the power button, and it lights up and plays the iconic startup sound. That sound. The one that pulled you away from Saturday morning cartoons, the one that meant you had about forty seconds before the game loaded and your whole afternoon was officially spoken for. If you were a 90s kid, your whole body might just recognize it before your brain even has a chance to catch up.

The ornament measures four inches wide by three and three-quarter inches tall. It is battery-operated, made from plastic, and priced at $28.99, which puts it comfortably in impulse-purchase territory. The detail work is genuinely impressive at this scale. Hallmark managed to capture the boxy silhouette of the original console, the disc lid, the familiar button layout, and the exact proportions of that chunky, well-loved controller. It doesn’t feel like a vague approximation. It feels like a tiny version of the real thing, and that distinction is worth paying attention to.

Designer: Hallmark Keepsake

That specificity is the whole argument. I’ve seen plenty of retro gaming merchandise move through the design and collectibles space over the years, from glossy art prints to enamel pins to limited-edition pieces with ambitious price tags. Most of it leans hard on the aesthetic without capturing the emotional core. The Hallmark ornament does something different. It doesn’t just reference the PlayStation; it recreates the moment. That startup sequence is not decoration. It is the sensory detail that pushes this object from ornament into something closer to a time capsule.

Nostalgia as a design strategy is everywhere right now, and I will be honest, I have grown a little skeptical of it. Brands lean on it often enough that it can start to feel calculated and hollow. But the PlayStation ornament earns its emotional weight. The original console launched in North America in 1995, which means it has been more than thirty years. A generation of gamers who grew up with it are now fully grown adults with homes to decorate, traditions to build, and a well-documented weakness for miniature versions of things they once loved. Hallmark, to its credit, knows exactly who it is speaking to.

The audience for this is also broader than it first appears. The obvious buyers are millennials putting up their own trees and trying to make the holidays feel personal and specific to them. But it also works as a gift between old friends, a knowing nod between siblings, or something a thoughtful parent picks up for a kid who spent half their childhood with a controller in hand. The PlayStation crosses enough generational lines that this ornament doesn’t land as niche. It lands as genuinely familiar, and that’s harder to pull off than it looks.

The Keepsake line has always operated somewhere in this territory, pairing pop culture touchstones with holiday tradition in a way that feels less cheesy than it probably should. Part of that is the quality of the execution, and part of it is the simple, almost elegant logic of placing a beloved object on a Christmas tree. A tree is already a collection of meaningful things, layered and personal and charged with memory. Adding a tiny PlayStation to it is not a departure from the spirit of the tradition. It might actually be exactly the point.

You can find the PlayStation Console Ornament at Hallmark Gold Crown stores and on Hallmark.com for $28.99. It began shipping in July as part of the brand’s annual Keepsake Premiere event, and given how quickly nostalgia-driven pieces like this tend to move, waiting is probably not the strategy here.

The post Hallmark Just Turned the Original PlayStation Into a $29 Tree Ornament first appeared on Yanko Design.