Signing off
Stephen Paul Hardy gets caught up in the past, whilst thinking about the future.
Stephen Paul Hardy gets caught up in the past, whilst thinking about the future.
Every one is the victim of it in one way or another - that subtle black art of advertising that gnaws away like a virus at the subconscious, until it finds a way in and encourages us to part with our money. Undoubtedly, the most successful tacks of retail therapy encouragement are the ones that really tug at the emotions, and probably top of the list has to be the type that hit that nostalgia button in us. Not for the first time recently was I prompted to this conclusion by an email that dropped into my inbox whilst I was sitting facing a blank screen that was to become this month’s chuntering.
It was from Club Solido, announcing the return of its “100 Series”1/43 vintage model replicas with the first four releases in new paint colours. This comes hard on the heels of the rolling out at last of the Corgi Model Club series - not to mention, of course, the previous Atlas replica series, plus others.All of those tug on our nostalgic memories and I would guess are predominately bought by a generation (or few) of us as replacements for dreams prompted by wooing adverts in our favourite weekly comics, birthday presents and Christmas presents, all lost long ago.
But is it a generation thing, or more of a fashion of an era thing - or a roll of universal energy that sloshes around our beach of life like massive successive waves? I have an uneasy feeling it is a mixture, connected by some inexplicable link.
So what product lines sold on the bait of nostalgia will manufacturers turn to in three decades time, to appeal to a new age of collectors? Maybe I am out of touch with what has been fashionable in children’s toys over the past 20 years, but I have a sneaking suspicion that diecast models no longer feature very highly in the rankings - or do they still?
More scarily, what will cars that manufacturers will be basing their new releases on be like in 30 years time? Will those with the Diesel TDi power plants I still have a high regards for as a driver be the new retro-cool nostalgia in an ultra clean electric world? DC