Nostalgia sells, especially when it comes to pop culture.
So it makes sense that as we continue to rocket toward a seemingly paperless world, adults harken back to their most paper-encumbered life stage: grade school.
Leading the charge, where present day marries the recent past, is Mead Corporation and its signature contribution to elementary-school organization: the Trapper Keeper.
Mead partnered with Kensington, a California-based seller of mobile tech accessories, to recreate essential ’80s and ’90s knowledge receptacles in a new, tablet-friendly form.
Gone is the mass of Velcro that protected your pencil-scribbled essays from spilling onto the floor. Now a handy magnet and grips save your $500 tablet from the same fate. The trademark wrap-around cover does remain.
Retrospective products are nothing new, but it caused us to ponder what other gadgets of yore could be taken from the schoolyard to the office.
The Lisa Frank iPad
Part unicorn daydream, part day-glow acid trip, Lisa Frank school supplies were required wares for many of the school girls in the ’80s and ’90s. Why not relive neuron-shocking vibrancy on your favorite tablet, because like former spokesmodel Mila Kunis, Lisa Frank is timeless.
Smart Snap Bracelets
We all know the familiar sound of the flexible stainless steel coiling around your wrist like an angry, and yet fashionable, serpent. With all this talk of smartwatches, why not apply the tech to something both engaging and maddeningly repetitive.
Smart snap bracelets could give you weather reports, play movie trailers and estimate how long it will take for the lacerations on your wrist to heal.
Fitbit Scrunchies
Tech is fast becoming more wearable and able to make you feel even guiltier about how much you drank at that happy hour, at least it can keep your hair back. —Carten Cordell
(August 2014)
