Emerica The Heritic X Ed Templeton

The Heritic X Ed Templeton (also The Heritic X The Eye) is the latest vegan skateboard shoe from Emerica! A redesign of a classic Emerica model, this colorway is all about your benevolent overlord, Ed Templeton. The Sect Eye peering from underneath black mesh, and since this is Ed’s shoe, we can only assume is inspired by some fishnet stalkings (wink, wink). Most importantly the shoe is cruelty free and contains no animal products. No leather, no suede, no animal based glues!  Take a look as we examine the newest vegan skateboard shoe from Emerica!

Vegan Skate Blog was fortunate enough to get to test out a pair earlier this year and put them through the wringer. And wring we did! Before we get to the carnage lets take a look at these beauties! This vegan cupsole skate shoe is far from a slim canvas number and gets back to what many of us have been missing in a cruelty free skate shoe! Lots of padding lots of life. For the casual skateboarder this is a shoe you can easily skate for six months or more before any significant wear and tear have you searching for your next shoe.

From box to board, The Heritic X Ed Templeton fits incredibly well. Tested in a size 10, the shoe doesn’t feel too narrow despite the extra padding in the toe cap.  The heal and collar are rigid below the padding and cup the heal of the foot considerably well. A solid fit like this makes the shoe skateable almost out of the box.  That stalking green eye stands out on the black toe and vamp. Made of a solid piece of black synthetic leather, the toe cap of the Heritic has an embedded reinforced layer. The promise is both toe protection and added skate life!The inside of the shoe reveals another Sect Eye and more importantly the foamy mid-sole similar to the G6!  Pick up this shoe and its light! Bend it and it flexes like a much thinner shoe! Most of all the impact protection is first rate with the best board feel around!From straight ahead, The Heritic X Ed Templeton is super low key. If it wasn’t for those big Emerica labels they would hardly be recognizable as a high performing skateboard shoe.  Maybe if you switch up the laces you can get loud, but our test pair only came with black and thats how we like ’em!  The portion of the upper that isn’t synthetic leather is a reptilian looking coated black canvas similar to what we saw with The Tempster last season.  This stuff holds up well to the stress of tight laces and doesn’t rip, it also handles the abrasion of grip tape fairly well! Add a couple flashes of gold with that Emerica triangle and top eyelet and its looking pretty spiffy. The padding in the tongue and collar have a medium fill. The feet and ankles maintain movement while being fairly well protected.Lurking in side, or should we say, for the lurker inside… Ed Templeton’s art on the insoles are a nice touch and may we say, more sophisticated then previous seasons. The triangle tread soles are all over Emerica’s shoes this season and last. They grip amazingly well with better durability. The Heritic X Ed Templeton have skid spots on the heal for some quick stops and several cross lines for nice sole flex. Here is a good look at the business end of The Heritic X Ed Templeton. Those caps don’t squeeze the toes, because they are actually embossed to the outer before being wrapped up in synthetic leather.  This means lots of wiggle room for your tootsies and amazing protection from slamming boards.The smoothness of the caps make for easy board flick too when launching into a kickflip!

Rain and general wet riding conditions in the Pacific Northwest can make for some wet feet.  However the toes stayed relatively dry even on rainy days. With synthetic leather this isn’t completely unexpected, but what was super nice is how well the Heritic breathes!  Swamp feet aren’t happening here due to all the mesh and super breathable tongue.

From the VSB shoe vault, side by side, the Heritic 3 (left) and Heritic X Ed Templeton (right, duh).  You’ll have to set your time machines to 2008 if you want the pair on the left. The design elements have a few of the same features. Check out those thick rubber toe caps! Great for longer wear but they just don’t have the smooth flick of the newest Heritic! 

“Thanks For Not Killing Me Emerica” This tag comes on some of the newest shoes from Emerica in 2014!

Last year VSB interviewed Ed Templeton and he drew this awesome picture for us! We where super excited to see the tag hanging on several of the newest vegan colorways (more to come)  for 2014!

Lets Let Ed have a little say and show off The Heritic before we get into the carnage.

The Heritic X Ed Templeton arrived several months ago and is seen here with about 40+ hours of skate wear. The toe caps are shredded but far from worn out and besides the obvious battle scars everything on this shoe is solid!While ollie holes are developed the shoe still has quite a few layers left to give. The toe around the kickflip area still feels strong and have hours of skating to go before they wear down to the foam layer seen in the larger ollie hole. A far fairer side to the worn but unbrutualized side of the Heritic. The toes however have started to sink a little which can look a little off putting. If you find yourself feeling self conscious about this just look into The Eye and remember, you are a scumbag street skater. The Transistor Sect Eye stares back while we take a look at the abrasions of the black waxed canvas!  A warn collar still holds strong with padding intact and only a slight run in the fish-net stalkings.The soles are just starting to go flat in the ball of the foot but they have maintained their grip well. Emerica has a grippier bottom on The Heritic X Ed Templeton. So while they may be lacking texture the grip is still strong.The heals of The Heritic aren’t going anywhere. Re-inforced stitching takes care of that. Try as we might, even pulling off the shoes hands free (stepping on the heals for removal) hasn’t caused heal blow out! Well worn and loved skateboard shoes rarely look anything but a disaster and The Heritic X Ed Templeton have a lot of fun left in them!  We give The Heritic X Ed Templeton our full support and would recommend a pair to anyone looking for a solid skateboard shoe.  The price on Emerica’s pro-line footwear has certainly gone up, but so has the quality.  This would be a solid shoe to see regularly from Emerica, not just as a special edition.

Emerica  size 7-11 $74.99