I've had my sock knocked off, it's not about speed or initial impact, it's about centrifugal or centripetal force, AKA, spinning! I was hit by a car, which sent me up in the air flipping, sure enough, when I landed, no shoe, no sock... It was killing me when they were using that huge yellow thing to hit Buster in the chest, if they would have gone for his knees sending him spinning through the air, the centripetal force of that spin would have caused a sock to come off.
I hope they see this and retest it, because I've confirmed this myth in real life, and it caused me a trip to the ER.

I agree that all attempts to knock the socks off of a piece of plastic are meaningless. B-Rad says he has seen this phenomenon in real life. I'll raise you another - it has happened to me. Twice.

Once when I was 17 yrs old, I had a high speed motocross crash that left me unconscious and injured. Immediately at impact, I kicked off a racing boot and the accompanying knee-length racing sock. I was left with a concussion, broken ribs, broken collarbone, and a numb foot.

The other time I had on Nike AirMax shoes and mid ankle sports socks. I was about 22 yrs old. I was working under the dash of a truck in my garage. I raised up fairly quickly to answer a comment from a friend, and I hit my head hard on the door frame of the truck cab. It cut my scalp and I needed stitches. At the moment of impact, I reflexively slammed my mouth shut so rapidly I broke pieces off of both top front teeth, and I kicked off my shoe and sock before falling back into the truck unconscious with another concussion.

My personal experiences were both witnessed by others in close proximity, both resulted in brief unconsciousness and concussions, and both involved my kicking off my left boot/shoe and sock.

Neither blow knocked my head off, shattered my legs, or involved military league explosions.

This MYTH is not a myth, but the glaring oversight of the crew to ignore the contribution of the body's nervous system when the brain experiences sudden and substantial impact trauma renders the results tainted.

MC

I can also confirm this in real life. My wife's ex-boyfriend was a marine arcwelder. He was electrocuted and it did knock him out of both boots and socks. I think Bravo2552 and sikcol nailed the error of your ways. The human foot will both extend and deform in a high impact situation. Buster's foot is in a permanent 90 degree flexed position and acts like a hook. Maybe a skeletal foot/ankle/shin assembly inside a ballistics gel leg?

My question is does the saying predate elasticized socks? Elasticized socks are designed to stay up better than the old-fashioned knit kind. Has this experiment been done with non-elasticized socks?

Old style socks need to be used. Modern socks have elastic or spandex. The idea of using a flexing foot/ankle/leg assembly that acts more like a natural foot would be much better than busters feet or the mannequin legs/feet used in the explosive experiment.

you guys should account for human skin oil sweat and thr properties of skin then re test

The guys really wiped out on this one. They needed to get Buster moving, maybe 150 mph, then stop him very suddenly.
On Dec 29, 1972, A fellow named Ronald Infantino was on Eastern Airlines Flight 401. It was an L-1011 and it went down in the everglades. The quote from the article was
"Like many of the other victims, Infantino had been stripped of his clothes by the force of the crash. Of all his clothing, only the elastic tops of his socks remained."

What about impact from velocity, not from an explosion, knocking one's socks off? As a kid, I hit a stump in a sledding fiasco, and my stretch gloves flew off... the first thing I remember is seeing both of them above me on the bushes.

If impact will pull stretchy-gloves off kid fingers, I have to believe that it is at least possible that an impact will remove socks, as well.

I agree about the elastic in socks & how it may be very different than back in the day. I also agree that the saying should have been checked out as how it actually did originate. And I have one comment about the methods used on the show: I believe that the first punch may have been too FAST, and it knocked the shoe off too fast to take the sock along with it. That is, what is the SLOWEST speed that a punch can hit and knock off the shoe? Perhaps at THAT speed, the sock will come along with it. What do you think?

They only tested one sock, the long sock and not a short sock. The short sock has less area so therefore less drag when u get hit by a car. So its more likely to come off. In the episode a sock slightly came off, with a short short it would have been almost all the way off.

Didn't Laugh-In examine this entire topic with its "sock it to me"? Perhaps not. I wonder what Goldie would say.

Please don't waste time revisiting this myth. Yes, they did it wrong, but who really gives a crap about this myth? Surely there must be better myths to bust... I really don't like the AnecdoteBusters episodes.

what about my socks
they are loose at the top & they slide down my foot

I just saw the episode where they have a dummy sitting on a see-saw. Sand bags are attached to a bungie cord, and hoisted in the air. The weight hits the end of the see-saw, and the dummy flies into the air. When the slow action camera replays the results, I noticed the dummies shoes fly off. In the episode knock your socks off, they used a ram to directly hit buster without much success. I wonder if anyone else noticed that the dummy on the see saw lost its shoes with no problem.