What companies can learn from past products we love — an alternative gift guide for retro tech

There’s a growing movement of consumers embracing popular products from the 90s and early 2000s, a trend sometimes dismissed as “nostalgia-driven”. But I believe something more profound than simple nostalgia is at work. Since many new adopters were not even born when these products were first sold, their embrace probably speaks to a deeper need.

Call it “Era Envy”. There’s an appeal to products from before the time when pop-up ads, subscriptions and privacy issues became ubiquitous. They’re from a period when products truly felt delightful, fun, and that they belonged to us.

Tactility is also what these products offer, a welcome respite from the flat touchscreens that around 2012, began defining what was considered “cutting edge” technology. As I’ve written before, people who’ve grown up surrounded by tablets and smartphones exhibit difficulty playing with building blocks or using scissors. Engaging with devices with physical buttons and other manual interfaces engage their mind in ways that are novel, intellectually stimulating, and freeing.

So we not only love these products because of their association with the 80s and 90s, which in retrospect seem like simpler, more stable times. From a design standpoint, these devices are often superior in many ways to their modern analogs, simply providing a better consumer experience.

Here are ten of my favorite devices/products from the 90s to early 2000s, roughly arranged from highest to lowest cost, with some analysis on their advantages from a user experience perspective.

Physical Buttons: BMW 5 Series, Third to Fifth Generation Models

Spanning between 1988 to 2010, BMW’s series of executive sedans reached its cockpit design apex,just before the mass marketing of touchscreens. The dashboard controls are all physical buttons and knobs, enabling you to adjust settings (temperature, radio, etc.) simply by touch, without having to glance away from the road. The rapid spread of touchscreens in luxury cars since 2010 has been a questionable and distracting design obsession since then, with safety groups only very recently raising concerns. (To the consternation of fans, BMW has recently introduced touchscreens into some of its newer models.) BMW’s longtime use of red/orange light dashboard displays, a military-grade safety standard, remains a classic feature for the automotive grand.

ThinkPad 700

Released in 1992, the first notebook computer in IBM’s ThinkPad brand, boasting the classic red dot mouse button invented by Ted Selker, is highly durable and has raised keyboard buttons, a form factor that’s easy to grow used to, especially for writers. Now owned by Lenovo, ThinkPad-branded laptops and tablets are still in production and widely used. Look around a coffee shop, and you might see someone on a trusty ThinkPad from 8 years ago.

Sony Handycam Mini DV Camcorder — DCR-HC20

A video recorder with surprisingly good audio quality, the Handicam remains a fun device to bring to parties and other group events — something to hand around and take impromptu clips, safe in the knowledge that the recordings won’t automatically go into the cloud. With a memory size limited to just 60 minutes, you also have to be careful how much footage you take, which encourages further creativity — as does its fun analog / digital effects options. (Video review here.)

Canon PowerShot

The Canon PowerShot line released classic point and shoot cameras with SD cards, enabling take and saving photos without the cloud. Many laptops still have an SD card access insert, so these, like most digital cameras, are future compatible. Pictured here is one of my favorite models: The Canon PowerShot A4000 IS Digital Camera with 8x Optical Zoom, 28mm Wide Angle Lens and 720p HD Video in Blue. It even made it to the New York Times as a comeback camera.

Motorola Razr Phone (2005-ish edition)

While the Motorola Razr is still in production, and the latest edition of the product is still a flip phone, there’s a huge community of people with great affection for the models that were manufactured over twenty years ago. These phones broke the mold of boring buisness-phone design with sleek colors and a large flat battery pack. Available in many colors and decorative options — my favorite (pictured above) was magenta with laser engraved Sakura flowers — the Razr’s physical buttons and the cool flip-top makes the act of making and receiving calls a tactile experience, keeping you in the real world, instead of yanking you into a less enjoyable world beneath a touch screen. (A love letter to the phone on YouTube here.) Thinking of getting one? They just take a SIM card, so they can still work with existing mobile networks.

Gameboy Color, Pikachu Edition

While Pokemon is still ridiculously popular in the smartphone era, there’s still something to be said for playing on the Gameboy Color, arguably the apex of handheld game consoles. (It’s so popular that it’s often still available in retail toy stores!) My own personal favorite is pictured above: The yellow Pikachu edition. Constrained by a small CPU and rudimentary graphics, game designers focused on creating titles with extremely fun and responsive gameplay. The cartridge based system and no Internet access means that kids can just play a single game without ads or other intrusive pull-based marketing campaigns.

Sony Microcassette Recorder

Lined with chunky tactile buttons in a compact form factor which fits perfectly in your palm, the non-standard microcassettes are a fun size and allow you to see how much tape is left. (My personal favorite is the M-470 edition.) Incredibly fun to use with friends, micro-podcasts, or to create highly personal, diary-like recordings. The tape lasts forever, and I still listen to and record on my recorder today! (When I was 12, I used to bring this with me when I climbed a tree, leaving messages for my future self.)

Sony CD Walkman Blue

With its physical buttons and its substantial yet still compact size, I’m recently seeing the Sony CD Walkman being used everywhere by people of all ages. Perhaps for the first time in many consumers’ lives, it enables anyone to own their music through convenient discs! Coupled with a CD burner, the draw is even more irresistible: No subscription or no ads, just music you love that you can create customized mixes for, and share with friends.

Golden Sound Story Books from Disney

Physical books with pre-recorded, touch-enabled sounds activated by buttons embedded on the hardcover, I fondly remember learning to read with Disney editions for Beauty and the Beast and Mickey’s Treehouse Adventure. In a sense, it’s got some of the benefits of a smartphone, just without all of the ads.

Milky Gel Pens and Black Paper

In 1993, my dad’s friends from Japan sent me my first Milky pens and spiral notebook of a cute all-black paper journal, an amazing experience. This is especially important for a child’s development: physical writing helps with language learning and widespread brain connectivity (see this study) is essential for children. (Especially before they get over-accustomed to touchscreens.) Paired with a lockable diary, you have a secret place for one’s thoughts, completely private and disconnected from the Internet.

And as a bonus recommendation in a similar vein, but in a modern product: I also recommend the Boogie Board sketch pad with a colored e-ink display and styluses, encouraging kids to scribble and write to their delight without creating a mess (ideal for car trips without the mess of markers or meltable crayons.

Fortunately, all of these products are still available on eBay and other commercial sites. And as more people come to discover the pleasure of retro, tactile technology, we’re likely to see the market for them grow.

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Amber Case is a designer and speaker, and a former research fellow at the MIT Center for Civic Media and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. She founded the Calm Tech Institute to better advocate for design which creates more harmony in people’s lives.