Onitsuka Tiger's stripes outlived the brand itself

A competition, not a commission

ASICS records the origin in one line on its corporate history: "In 1966, after an in-house design competition, the Mexico line (the current ASICS stripes) are introduced."¹ The mark that now runs on the sides of shoes in around 180 countries was not commissioned from a design office.² It came out of an internal contest, and the winner has never been named by anyone.

Accounts of how many designs were submitted settle on roughly 200, though the figure traces to secondary sources rather than to an ASICS document.³ What ASICS does state, in its own words, is what the competition was for: the company had been publishing a trademarks section in its catalogue as early as 1961, under the line "Trademarks make companies prosper".⁴ A shoemaker in Kobe was publishing a trademarks page five years before the mark existed.

Not the shoe everyone names

The stripe is almost always credited to the Mexico 66. Both ASICS and Onitsuka Tiger say otherwise. The brand's own history states that "the stripe first appeared on the LIMBER UP Leather BK, introduced for the 1968 Mexico Olympic Game", and its anniversary pages give the same model.^5,6 The Mexico 66 as a named product is a 2002 reissue built on that archive, not a 1966 original. The familiar version of the story is a retroactive simplification, and it is repeated in the English language reference literature.

What the stripe was for is genuinely contested. One account has the winning design integrating vertical elements into the lacing system, improving fit and durability. Another says the entries were refined for visibility on television and on the field. A third describes the mark as providing reinforcement as well as decoration.^3,7 None of the three comes from a dated ASICS document. The accounts differ, and the company has not settled them.

Its public debut was unambiguous. At the 1968 Mexico City Games the Japanese delegation wore the striped Mexico model at the opening ceremony.⁸

The mark survives its own brand

On 21 July 1977 Onitsuka Co., Ltd. became ASICS Corporation and the Onitsuka Tiger name was retired. The brand's own account records the withdrawal as temporary.⁵ The stripe did not go with it. It transferred straight onto ASICS footwear, where the company today calls it "the iconic symbol of ASICS shoes".⁴

That is the unusual part. A brand name was withdrawn from the market for twenty-five years while its principal visual asset stayed in continuous commercial use under a different name. When Onitsuka Tiger returned in 2002, the mark it came back with had spent a quarter of a century building recognition for somebody else. From that point the same stripe has run on two brands at once, which is why ASICS maintains two separate names for it: the ASICS stripes on ASICS product, and the Onitsuka Tiger Stripes in legal and enforcement contexts.^4,9

It should not be confused with the ASICS Spiral, the stylised letter a, which is a different mark and dates from 1992.²

The registration history points the same way. ASICS states that the earliest trademark registration of the stripes was made in the United Kingdom, without giving a year, and the company today holds approximately 5,000 registered trademarks centred on its house mark, with the ASICS mark recognised as well known in India in February 2024 and in China in May 2024.^4,2 The signature predates the corporate name by eleven years.

Sixty years on, a brand tries to do without it

ASICS defends the stripe actively. In June 2026 it published a statement that it "holds numerous trademark rights related to the stripe design used on the sides of Onitsuka Tiger footwear, known as the 'Onitsuka Tiger Stripes'", and added that it "cannot tolerate any actions that undermine the brand value it has built through continuous corporate efforts".⁹

At the same time the brand is loosening its grip on it. Ryoji Shoda, who heads the Onitsuka Tiger business and is named in the report as chief executive of the incoming OT GROUP company, puts the reasoning on the record in June 2026: "For the past decade or so, we've believed that we needed to become a brand that can sell, even without the stripes. Otherwise, it starts to feel like we are selling because of our affinity with Asics."¹⁰

Sixty years after an internal competition produced it, the smaller of the two brands that carry the mark states that it is working on being recognisable without it. The condition it describes dates from 1977, when the mark was left with both.