Pizza Hut's new shoes order pizza and pause your TV

Imagine two Amazon Dash buttons sewn into specialized, limited-edition marketing gimmicks. Welcome to the return of the Pie Top.

I'm not here to tell you why pizza-ordering, TV-pausing shoes exist. But, here we are.

Pizza Hut created a marketing stunt of specialized sneakers last year that could order a pizza (Pizza Hut only, of course) with a press of a large button on top.

This year, these shoes have returned: Pie Tops II, as they're called. Sneaker collectors take note: they're a limited run of 50, created by the Shoe Surgeon, a custom sneaker designer in Los Angeles. Pizza Hut's run of Pie Tops last year were made the same way.

The shoes are red or wheat-colored. They pair with Bluetooth to the Pizza Hut app to basically do one-press ordering. Also, these shoes add another button that pairs with certain cable TV set-top boxes to pause live television... a one-button remote.

Wheat pizza shoes.
Paul Mcgeiver

If you're desperate to buy a pair of Pizza Hut sneakers, they'll be available to order on March 19 on HBX, until the very limited run ends. In the meantime, I'm actually going to try wearing a pair and see if they actually work well to pause TV.

It's a marketing stunt timed to March Madness. It's absurd. Of course, branded weirdness has been around for years now, like the Doritos MP3 player bag or an unfolding pizza turntable. At least these are actual shoes.

Plenty of other smart shoes already exist in the world. GPS-enabled safety ones, training ones and fitness ones. Add some volume controls and voice, and maybe the next Pie Tops could be... never mind.

source:CNet News