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Y-3 and adidas Revive the Iconic Beast Pack for Its 20th Anniversary

Taishi Hayashi's cult Beast Pack artwork returns on Y-3's four-colorway F50 reissue, 20 years after 1,000-pair-per-colorway originals became collector grails.

Sofia Martinez2 min read
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Y-3 and adidas Revive the Iconic Beast Pack for Its 20th Anniversary
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The Wolf colorway hit the Y-3 Fall/Winter 2026 runway in Paris before most collectors even knew a reissue was coming. That January preview was the first signal that Yohji Yamamoto and adidas were reaching back into a 20-year-old archive entry: the F50 TUNIT Beast Pack, originally released in 2006 in editions of just 1,000 pairs per colorway and long established as one of football-fashion's most covetable objects.

The full four-piece reissue dropped on April 1, arriving in the same four animal identities as the original: a blue Dragon (SKU KK3650), a yellow Tiger (KK3652), a red Eagle (KK3651), and a silver Wolf (HP9981). Lifestyle editions retail at $300 USD. A performance version of the Wolf, built on the F50 ELITE FG last and pitched as on-pitch ready, retails separately at $275 USD and is the only colorway offered in that configuration.

What made the original a grail wasn't scarcity alone. Yamamoto commissioned Japanese artist Taishi Hayashi to create the graphics, rendering each beast motif across a synthetic AdiHex microfiber upper. Every pair shipped in a metal cage stamped with both the adidas logo and Yamamoto's signature, a piece of packaging that functioned as sculpture and reinforced the "restrained beast" concept underpinning the collection. The silhouette itself carried additional football credibility: the underlying adidas F50 TUNIT spiked cleat was the boot Lionel Messi wore during the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, the same tournament that gave the original Beast Pack its cultural moment.

The 2026 version keeps Hayashi's artwork central but updates the construction for street wear. The '+F50' branding is gone, replaced by a velcro-assisted shroud carrying Y-3 logos. The outsole transitions from the original's spiked configuration to a flat stud layout, sourced from the current F50 model and suited to pavement rather than pitch.

Timing is pointed. Y-3, the collaborative label Yamamoto and adidas launched formally in 2003 (the 'Y' for Yohji, the '3' for adidas' Three Stripes), positioned the reissue ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. For a silhouette that once shipped in a metal cage to 1,000 people per colorway, the bar for the sequel was never going to be low.

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