Isn’t ‘retro’ beginning to get a little old?

Retro is back. Again.
What is it about old stuff that makes people return to it repeatedly?
Last year, we gave our daughter a 40s-style radio that also played CDs and tapes. It was clever and original. This year, it is one model among 50 designed along the same lines.
Retro gifts are hotter than ever. Hundreds of sites offer items to help you relive those golden days of yesteryear.
Remember Captain Astro? I don’t either, but he’s got a fish bowl on his head and you can order a lunch pail with him on it.
You can get that pedal fire engine your parents could never afford, although it’s a little late now to show it off to that spoiled, rich neighbor kid. For some, it must be worth the $289 to have the pedal fire engine they’ve always wanted.
For $80 you can get a Chatty Cathy doll. That’s $80.
The Easy Bake oven is back. Strawberry Shortcake and Hello Kitty are back. Cabbage Patch dolls are back.
I will not buy a Cabbage Patch doll. Last time -- 1985 – my daughter fed it popcorn. The popcorn lodged in Xara Fanny’s mouth and could not be extracted. Every attempt to pull it out only pushed it in more firmly. The popcorn grew nastier and turned a disgusting gray.
Eventually, Xara Fanny, none too lovely to begin with, needed to be turned toward the wall. Finally, unable to stand looking at her, I tucked her away in the closet. Fortunately, the folks at Babyland General Hospital never found out.
I doubt I could even sell her on E-bay now.
Because of the wonders of the Internet, you can search for nearly any toy you had as a kid. Someone will sell you their old version of Stratego or Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots – for a price. There is even a site called got2haveit.com that sells vintage toys. Another site contains nothing but the wistful ramblings of people fondly remembering their old toys.
Nostalgic items take us back to a time when things were warmer, brighter, simpler – and a whole lot less convenient.
No one really wants the clunky, old, slow, difficult product. They just want the nostalgia of the clunky, old, slow, difficult product.
Well, this year, if you want the look and feel of retro with the convenience of the modern, you are in luck.
You can get a King-Kong wall clock with the “original King-Kong” from the 1933 movie posters – but you won’t have to wind it since it runs on a single AA battery.
Old Atari-style computer games like Pac Man and Space Invaders are back -- but now plug and play on your TV.
You can order DVDs of nearly any old television series you remember – no longer needing to wait a whole week for the next episode.
I saw a 1957 model pay phone for sale this week at the mall. It looked very authentic – except for the push buttons in the dial.
The ultimate in merging of old and new has got to be the Phobile, found only on British sites, as far as I could tell, and costing about 24 pounds (41 dollars). Remember the old, black, Western Electric phones, standard in nearly every household? Well the Phobile is just the handset from one of those, made to plug into your cell phone. It has the coil cord and everything.
I guess it looks cool to meander around town talking into one of those awkward, ugly unmanageable phones, with the black coil cord emerging from your pocket.
But the idea behind the new old stuff is to balance that warm, fuzzy feeling of childhood with convenience. Some items are more convenient than others. Sometimes you have to pay a big price for the warmth, or give up some convenience to be kitschy. But judging from the popularity of nostalgia, I think before long we won’t have anything to reminisce about except the time we reminisced. It’s hard to get nostalgic about the good ol’ days when we were nostalgic.
But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe in 15 years, we’ll be saying, “Hey! Remember ‘retro’ ”?