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The folks at the Finish Line shoe store in the Boynton Beach Mall expected some serious enthusiasm early Friday morning as well.

"People in Boynton Beach are cutthroat for these shoes. We had a couple fights outside the gates. There was mass destruction. A couple security guards said people were arrested. They were out there pepper spraying," said Calvin Cannon, one of the store's managers.

Boynton Beach police could not yet be reached to confirm any arrests.

But the scene that unfolded before Cannon's eyes was none-the-less shocking he said.

The store opened at 7 a.m. with some of the beefiest employees manning the door, allowing only three to five people in at a time for their shot at one of the 130 pairs in stock, Cannon said. The shoes retail for $180, but they're in such demand that sales on eBay are in the $400 range.

By 9:15 a.m., Finish Line in Boynton Beach had sold out — and not without some battle scars.

"It was a mob of people. Apparently they'd been sitting there all night. It was first come, first served," Cannon said.

Cannon said arguments fire up quickly, "Either you cut me in line or you have the size I wanted. They were yelling at employees that they lied about how many pairs we had."

For the general public, this release appears to have been flying under the radar, but among "sneakerheads" who collect footware like some collect baseball cards, the reappearance of the shoe in its 1996 original styling glory was all the rage — literally.

The Associated Press is reporting that police used pepper spray to subdue a rowdy crowd of customers near Seattle and arrested some shoppers in Atlanta after a crowd of them broke down a door in their pursuit.

Said Cannon: "It's a shoe. They were acting like it was the last piece of meat in the world."