retro

The retro craze is still going strong, especially with gadgets like a flash drive disguised as a mix tape, and devices that will let you transfer tunes from old cassettes to MP3s. But here's something that kicks it up a notch--an MP3 player inside an actual cassette tape. You have all the benefits of an MP3 player--an SD card slot, music and volume controls, an on/off switch, and a USB charger--but in a decidedly retro cassette tape. And this is the crazy-cool part: This cassette MP3 player can be used like a normal cassette in a regular … Read more

For a while, there seemed to be no end to the incredible shrinking of cell phones. The tinier your handset, the cooler you probably thought you looked around 2001 or so. But the trend has slowed, thankfully, and in some circles, there's a backlash against handsets that required toddler-size hands and heads to talk comfortably.

Take the Yubz retro handset, for instance. It's the same design from many millions of dial and push-button telephones in the 1970s and '80s, before cordless became king. The earpiece would fit snugly between your ear and shoulder as you walked several feet … Read more

One of the tragic victims of the cell phone's widespread popularity are good, old-fashioned timepieces. Everyone has a do-it-all, pocketable device that makes calls, tells time, and surfs the Internet, so clocks and watches have fallen by the wayside.

Thanks to these retro Nixie Tube Clocks and DIY kits, you can reclaim time-telling in the name of the clock. Not only that, you can also bring your desk's fashion sense back to the glory years of the standalone timepiece.

These hand-made clocks and clock-making kits display the time with old-fashioned glowing orange numbers in Russian Nixie tubes. According … Read more

Maybe it's a function of getting older or frustration with bad design (probably both), but some of us at Crave have been drawn increasingly to retro looks of late, as long as they're done right. But we don't often see the concept applied to cameras, which is why we were especially taken with the "Rolleiflex MiniDigi."

On the outside, this throwback item is almost a dead-ringer for the Rollei's "Twin Lens Reflex" models made in 1920s Germany, according to Technabob, but their innards have gone digital with 3.1-megapixel photography. And although … Read more

According to this story in the Los Angeles Times, the semi-classic car featured in Back to the Future may be primed for a limited-run comeback.

DeLorean Motor Co. Vice President James Espey has 200 of the original V-6 engines in stock. While DeLorean Motor Co. still stays in business refurbishing and servicing early-1980s DeLoreans, Espey says they may start building new ones from the stock parts in the next few years.

Don't expect to see new DeLoreans all over the place. If it happens, Espey is quoted as saying new car production will be limited to about 20 per … Read more

Creating a retro music system is tricky business. So often companies either go too far or simply reproduce the same ugly designs sported by the originals.

But Kaito--not to be confused with the band--seems to have struck a rare balance with its radio MP3 recorder. When the removable MP3 player is docked snugly in place, the system looks like a 1960s-style transistor radio. It does far more than relay airwave signals, however, with the ability to record AM-FM or shortwave broadcasts in digital formats not unlike the Swedish-made "Popcatcher" digital radio and recorder we saw earlier this … Read more

We've got to hand it to Bush. (No, not that Bush, the one that makes consumer electronics.) There are tons of companies out there that are trying to recapture mid-century chic, but the U.K. company has done the job exceptionally well, which is a good thing because the radio is such an important icon for that generation.

Its latest creation may be the ultimate combination of old and new in the genre. The unfortunately named TR04DABBLK may look like something from Happy Days at first glance with its piano-black finish, according to GeekAlerts, but closer inspection will find … Read more

Believe it or not, there are some retro gadgets that are even too old for us. So we must seize on them while we can, because soon the only machines that will fall into this category will be from the Industrial Revolution.

Enter the HP 35s calculator, a new version of the original HP-35 (note the hyphen) released in 1972, which is being trotted out from the rest home for its 35th birthday. The seminal gadget has been updated to include "ample memory for keystroke programming, equation solving and more than 800 storage registers; 100 built-in functions; and a … Read more

It's hard to get old-school arcade action with today's controllers. Whether it's the Wii's motion-sensing remote or the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3's wireless gamepads, they just don't capture the frantic, rugged joystick-beating and button-thumping of yesteryear. Don't worry, though. $200 will get you the glory back, thanks to X-Arcade.

X-Arcade makes retro arcade controllers, and the Tankstick is the company's beefiest, most fearsome unit. This massive controller weighs 20 pounds and sports two joysticks, 22 buttons, and a trackball. Most impressive is this bad boy's lifetime warranty; X-Arcade will repair … Read more