The Lunar Force 1 Duckboot Still Has Lunar in Its Name, and Nike’s Spec Sheet Now Says Air

Nike put the Lunar Force 1 Winterized Duckboot back on sale October 23 in a colorway it lists as Iron Grey, Black and Iron Grey. Translated, the whole boot is one shade of cold grey sitting on a black sole, and there is no color story in it anywhere. The name is the story. Nike has been selling a boot called the Lunar Force 1 for fourteen years, and the spec sheet attached to this pair does not say Lunarlon once.

The Lunar Force 1 arrived in 2012, built for the Air Force 1’s thirtieth birthday and credited to Nike designer Marc Dolce. The premise sat in the name. Nike took the most recognizable upper it owns, cut weight out of it, and set Lunarlon underneath, the foam the brand had been pushing since 2008 as its lightest ride. The Duckboot came out of the same program, a winterized build with a molded shell wrapped around the toe and a collar tall enough to keep snow on the outside. It has run almost every winter since, cycling through black and gum, Limestone and Baroque Brown, with the DZ5320 code family carrying the most recent of them. Nike has never meaningfully redesigned it. That is unusual for a company that redraws its boots constantly, and it matters more now that the shelf around the Duckboot has filled up. Nike currently sells the Air Force 1 GORE-TEX Vibram, a Mid version of the same idea, the Air Max Goadome Low and the Air Max Foamdome, all at once, all aimed at the same cold month.

Nike’s copy for this pair is specific where it wants to be. A real and synthetic leather upper with a water-repellent finish. Metal lace hardware. An inner collar built to keep moisture and cold out. A star pattern cut from durable plastic. A rugged outsole, a high collar and a pull tab on the tongue. Then one line that does the work the name used to do: Nike Air technology absorbs impact for cushioning with every step. The product-details list underneath it offers exactly one word about what is between foot and ground, and that word is foam. The photographs match the restraint. The grey leather is flat and matte, the molded toe shell is glossier than the panels around it, and the lace hardware runs up the ankle in dark metal loops rather than punched eyelets. The star panel sits on the forefoot in the same grey as everything else, so you find it by light rather than by color. In the detail frames Nike has beaded water across the upper to prove the finish works, and those are easily the most interesting pictures in the set.

One more thing worth saying about the shape, because it is the part the Duckboot name is actually borrowing. The rubber shell wraps the toe and the whole lower half of the boot in a single piece and runs up past the flex point, which is the construction hunting boots have used for a century to keep a wet field out. Nike’s version is molded rather than stitched to a leather upper, so there is no seam at the waterline for water to find. That detail is why the boot has survived twelve winters of colorways without a redesign, and it is the one spec on the page that has nothing to do with cushioning at all.

Lunarlon is gone from Nike’s vocabulary. The brand let it fade out across the line as React and then ZoomX took the lightweight-cushioning job, and a boot still carrying the Lunar name while its own spec sheet credits Air is what the end of that transition looks like in public. There are two honest readings. Nike keeps the name because the shape is known and a rename would cost more attention than it would earn, or nobody inside Nike has opened this product page in years. The second is more plausible than it sounds, because the copy still opens with a joke about the far side of the moon. Either way the Duckboot is now a winterized Air Force 1 wearing a Lunar badge, which is roughly what most buyers assumed it was in the first place.

At $170 the Duckboot lands in the middle of a crowded shelf. The Air Force 1 GORE-TEX Vibram runs $150, its Mid version $180, the Air Max Goadome Low $175, and the Air Max Foamdome $265. Five winter boots built around the same Nike Sportswear instinct, inside a $115 spread, and the Duckboot is the only one of them with more than a decade of seasons behind it. It has never been a resale shoe. For something designed to be walked through slush in February, that is the correct outcome rather than a failure.

The Nike Lunar Force 1 Winterized Duckboot is available now, released October 23, 2026, in Iron Grey, Black and Iron Grey under style code DZ5320-002. Retail is $170 in men’s sizing, and pairs are at Nike.com, where Nike files the boot under Lifestyle and Basketball.

Written by

The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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