For a long while, one of the biggest controversies in the world has yet to be solved. Yes folks, I"m talking about Miles "Tails" Prower's shoes.

Miles first originated in "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" for Sega Genesis. Here you can see an in-game shot of him. Next to that is a zoomed version of his shoe. The third picture is one shown at the end of the game if you can manage to beat it with Tails. Fourth is a piece of art depicting Tails (not from a game).



This establishes the basic design with a front of white and a back of red, with a slightly round shape. This seems to be the un-disputed design, or at least for the top. Much of the controversy surrounding this issue is based on the bottom of the shoes.

For a while, this shoe design seemed like the finished one. However, a few years later came a TV show starring Sonic, Tails, and many more. Here in the first picture you can see that the designers either disliked the previous design, they wanted to be creative, or they ignored previous designs. The second picture shows a Tails Plushie, also with the solid red shoe bottoms. It bottom of Tails' shoes are not shown an any games that came out around this time, and the TV show was popular, so it is to be asumed that this new design was accepted.



Unfortunately, the shoe design was not done being tampered with just yet. As if two noticibly different designs on a popular character weren't enough, the other Sonic TV show could not just pick a previous design and stick with it. Here you can see an entirely new shoe design, like an invert of Sonic's.



This new format was not followed in the games, and so was abandoned quickly. Another seemingly cemented part of the Tails Shoe Design was it's shape. In general, it had been round, with the exception of the last picture. But in this artwork coming out around Sonic 3, we see an almost cone-shaped (certainly pointy) design, a lot like that of Sonic's shoes.



This can be called an "Artists' impression" however, so is not necisarrily a new design. After a while, new 3D Sonic games came out (Sonic Adventure 1 and 2) and with it a refined Tails. Luckily, artists seemed to have decided to stick with the original concept, so no changes took place. However, along with these new games came a new set of plushies, and of course, Tails was one of those made. On the first picture shown below, you can see the plush, with grey soles. The reason for this seems logical, if a little off. In the second picture, you see again the zoom of the Tails shoe from "Sonic 2."



On the sprite, you might notice the grey sole that was not used in the end-of-game picture. The creaters of this new plush might have merely been following the lead of Tails' first apperance. Alas, this is not an excuse, as it may be argued that the grey on the sprite's shoe was just an outline, not showing an actual grey bottom. This is supported by the end-of-game picture, therefore perhaps assigning the plush designers the title "sloppy."

The conclusion drawn by the researchers is that it is likely Tails' change of shoes will not stop, and can be blamed on the constant remake of Tails' actual design, as can be seen between the first two pictures (each a piece of artwork, the first from the past, the second from the present) and the next two (each a sprite of Tails in a game, the first from a past game, the second from a present).



Also, the researchers insist that Tails is so freaking awesome that we must include these last two pictures.