For Six-Toed Runner, Every Mention of Injini Is a Knife to the Heart
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A local runner with six toes on his right foot suffers silently every time he sees or hears a mention of sock brand Injini, Dumb Runner has learned, knowing that he will never be able to use the company’s products.
Injini sells “toesocks,” so called because they provide individual compartments for each toe. Because virtually everyone has five toes on each foot, each of Injini’s socks has five toe compartments.
“It sucks,” said Tyrone Rugen, 38. “Just because I have a supernumerary digit, I am totally shut out.”
Rugen acknowledged that he doesn’t encounter the brand that often—but, he said, when he does, “it feels like a knife to my heart.”
Usually, he said, that happens as he’s reading a magazine or scrolling through social media and he sees an ad for the socks. (“It’s like, oh, Tyrone, here’s this awesome product that you’ll never, ever be able to use, ha ha.”) Sometimes, though, it’s more personal.
“I was out with some friends the other night, most of them runners, and one of them actually takes her shoe off to show us her awesome new socks,” Rugen said. “Guess what brand they are?”
“She looks right at me,” he recalled, “and says, They’re so comfortable.”
Rugen said he once contacted Injini to suggest the brand offer six-toed socks for runners like him, to no avail.
“I got back a form letter, basically,” he said. “And a coupon code for 20% off their socks.”
“That hurt.”
Reached for comment, an Injini spokesperson told Dumb Runner, “Maybe polydactyl runners wear socks; we don’t know. Frankly, we don’t want to know. It’s a market we could do without.”
