#nostalgia

#nostalgia

Let's not beat around the bush: Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a nostalgia play. Its best trick is briefly reminding you of when your life was someone else's problem. It's a lazy morning spent watching cartoons. It's wasting a fistful of quarters on the X-Men machine at the arcade, barely beating the second stage, and not regretting a single moment. It's one of the slickest, most fun beat 'em ups I've played in a while.

There's something pretty charming about the Midwest's relationship with soda. Maybe it's the long winters that make people reach for anything fizzy and cheerful, or perhaps it's the region's talent for taking ordinary things like cheese curds or county fairs and turning them into cultural touchstones. Soda is no exception. In the Midwest, fizzy drinks aren't just refreshments; they're tiny time capsules of community pride, quirky nostalgia, and a very particular kind of regional stubbornness that insists, "No, actually, our version is better."

Piles of folded sweaters and polo shirts cascaded into disorder, their tags boasting incremental markdowns that seemed to shout over one another. The escalator, unmaintained for close to a year, stood inert. Nervous-looking shoppers bouldered their way up its heavy corrugated steps in search of washrooms or the closest exit to the parking lot. All the beauty counters featured displays which had been denuded to East German levels of bare.

I pounced on the Nintendo Switch 2 when it came out earlier this year because I wanted something that felt familiar while living abroad. I've been a digital nomad for nearly ten years and currently live in Bangkok, Thailand, nearly 8,500 miles away from my six children and two grandchildren. The Switch 2 lets me play the latest games with my kids, which I love to do, even when the time change makes schedules wonky.

Two Ways of Living Through Time Clock timers live by external time. They wake up to an alarm, eat breakfast at a designated hour, and arrive at work precisely when the clock dictates. Their day unfolds in neat, measurable units, each activity clearly marked by a start and an end. A clock timer's sense of order comes from synchronizing with the external rhythms of time.

Where some photos show familiar dusty green carpets and smoke stained curtains, the next presents another type of common American interior - a room stacked with rifles. Nadia's confronting approach is no better represented than through weaponry; one standout image shows a handsome knife decorated with an American flag grip - cultural history and the implication of violence all in one.

According to the expert, young people have stopped looking to the future. Like the lost souls in Dante's Inferno, they seem condemned to look backward. The products they consume remakes, revivals, sequels, and reboots are stitched together from the scraps of the 20th century, especially those from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Everything new feels familiar. Disruption and innovation capable of changing the world still exist, Segal argues over the phone, but the dominant cultural landscape is saturated with nostalgic remakes.

When something becomes old and then new again during my lifetime, I might be forgiven for feeling at once quite aged and a little sentimental. But suggestions that the landline telephone may be having a cultural renaissance just make me feel old and somewhat triggered by experiences of fraught teenage social negotiations over the long obsolete rotary dial phone of my youth.

Nostalgia is everywhere. And while yearning for the past is nothing new, its ubiquity in modern marketing and commerce is fueled by digital platforms that make it easier than ever to revisit the imagery, music, and aesthetics of earlier decades-transforming memory into a shared, searchable experience. As of October 2025, TikTok's #nostalgia hashtag included 16.9 million posts, with almost 100 billion views, while #90s and #Y2K added tens of billions more.

Once a decade or so, the urban-centric fashion world discovers this delightful concept called The Countryside. With the vanishingly scant levels of self-awareness that are fashion's default setting, it then proceeds to immediately and loudly tell the world about it. There are so many trees! Don't you just love trees? Especially at this time of year when the leaves are lovely tasteful colours, great for selfies, very flattering to the complexion. The pubs are absolutely charming. Sometimes they even have sourdough.

Twenty-five or so years ago, one day after school I went to visit my dad at his office. We didn't have a computer at home at the time so whenever I was around his, I would beg him to let me use it to play with MS Paint. I was probably around 7 or 8, and my go-to artwork was a portrait of my him made with the spray tool - perfect to recreate his short, spiky hair and stubble -

Tom Hanks is a star who's always had one foot squarely in the past. As an actor he's forever been likened to James Stewart, a reincarnation of the charming, essentially good American everyman, a from-another-era lead who's increasingly been more comfortable in period fare (in the last decade, he's appeared in just four present-day films). As a producer, he's gravitated toward historical shows such as Band of Brothers, John Adams and The Pacific;

Corned beef hash first arrived in the U.S. during the 1800s with the culinary traditions of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from northern Europe. But, the dish didn't see its majorly popular U.S. debut until WWII, when resourceful home cooks worked to stretch limited meat rations. Post-war kitchens across the nation continued placing a special focus on canned goods during this period, and Armour Star Corned Beef Hash arrived right on time - innovatively packing a complete, ready-to-heat meal into a convenient can.

Nostalgia has become one of the most powerful drivers in the tech and collectible markets. From miniature consoles to pixel-perfect Lego sets, the formula is well established: take a beloved cultural touchstone and re-engineer it for a modern audience. Nintendo, more than almost any other company, has mastered this to the point of it being an art (remember the Poke9mon Tamagotchis from a few months ago?) Hallmark's Keepsake line has long been a partner with Nintendo, translating iconic characters and scenes into physical ornaments for collectors.

For those of us born a few decades ago, toys like the Gameboy signifies simpler times; a period when digital devices had a single - maybe two - functions and were less implicitly demanding of our constant attention. The Gameboy came with a whole host of programs, a color camera with an attachable printer, but not much else. The Tamagotchi did require our attention but at a pace more aligned with fundamental human interaction.

Many adults might name "Rolaids" as their favorite candy. But, children's digestive systems seem to be built differently, effortlessly cycling through sugary sweets and soft drinks. Still, foodies who grew up during the Disco Decade won't soon forget one particular discontinued childhood drink - the popular grape soda inspired by one of our highest-ranking grape juice brands. We could, of course, only be talking about Welch's Grape Soda, which dominated the '70s and has earned a place of fame among today's soda-lovers.

"In a sense, we are all time travelers drifting through our memories, returning to the places where we once lived." ~Vladimir Nabokov I found it by accident, a grainy image of my childhood bedroom wallpaper. It was tucked in the blurry background of a photo in an old family album, a detail I'd never noticed until that day. White background.

I got myself a weighted stuffed animal because I have pretty terrible anxiety, and even though he doesn't, my husband liked it so much I got him one, too. I'm 45 and he's 53, and we sleep with Bean (sloth) and Java (capybara) every night. I will NEVER judge anyone at any age for sleeping with stuffed animals. 💕

Nostalgia is running rampant in marketing, with myriad brands resurrecting old ads, taglines and mascots to build emotional resonance. What happens when an organization wants to do the opposite of nostalgia bait: make consumers forget its most-recognized slogan in favor of something fresher and more relevant? The National Pork Board was recently faced with such a challenge, and its journey to repositioning pig protein carries larger lessons for how legacy brands are adapting to the digital age.

Nostalgia is really having a moment lately - with ballet music boxes, Y2K fashion, and celestial decor from the '90s trending. You don't have to actually remember old-school products to feel nostalgic attachment to them; just knowing that something is from (or inspired by) the past can bring about feelings of comfort. You can revisit the charm of simpler times in all sorts of ways, and holiday gift-giving is a great time to do just that.

We hate to break it to you, but Stars Hollow, Connecticut, is not a real place. Yet the endearing small town depicted in Gilmore Girls was so flush with quaint details-falling leaves, quirky gatherings, and sweet little nooks such as Taylor's Olde Fashioned Soda Shoppe, Stars Hollow Books, and Weston's Bakery -that it's easy to imagine Lorelai and Rory Gilmore gabbing over coffee at the retro-style Luke's Diner at this very moment.

There are some days when the only thing that can lift your mood is seeing a man in a top hat play the flute to summon a jodhpur-wearing Oompa-Loompa. Luckily, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has plenty of that and a lot more besides. I don't care if you've just received a terminal diagnosis or found out your wife's been having an affair with Chris Martin, you stick this film on and you'll smile.

Growing up, my family traveled to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for one week every summer. It was the quintessential family vacation: sun, sand, surf, lots of food, and too many things to do to ever get bored. But you know how it goes - I got older, moved away, had kids of my own, and life just kind of took over. So, decades after my last visit, I recently headed back to North Myrtle to see if it still