You look at the stuff from the early and mid 2000s, it's pretty true to the original and the new colors, for a while, actually had *better* materials than the originals (e.g. Laney 5, navy 1, burgundy 5, Olympic 6, etc).

By 2010 things had really slipped and ultimately got really bad. They didn't put the same air units in the last round of OG 11 colors and the gamma blues, for example. Lots of spotty quality on the uppers and what not. Missing details like the 3M on the black/red 13s.

Now they are doing this "remastered" thing but you'd think the idea would be an improvement on the original but instead they are kind of between the spotty quality and the top quality. The price keeps going up though.

Let's not romanticize the originals too much either, on a lot of them they used pretty cheap leather though not as junky as some of the retros.

The thing I would like to see is a marriage of the old styles and the current performance technology. Imagine all the classic Js, reworked with improved fit (nothing crazy, no visible Flywire or anything and still leather/nubuck) and unlocked Zoom, flight plates, Air Max insoles and other stuff they have used recently. That would be amazing to me. But there is a purist streak against that, even though they issue ugly ass hybrids of Js all the time and do exactly what I am talking about with the Air Max line every year.