The cassette tape is one of the key romantic and technological artifacts of the 1980s. Barely a teenage romance began without a C90 of carefully-chosen songs changing hands. Now almost entirely replaced by MP3 technology, the cassette is nevertheless enjoying a sort of cargo cult renaissance among a new generation who may have never handled a real tape of the Janice Long show, but still like the look of the little plastic box that (we were regularly assured) had the power to kill the music industry

The classic compact cassette form factor is currently to be seen represented in belt buckles, adhesive tape dispensers and tote bags big enough to conceal an entire eighties cassette player,

There is, naturally, a thriving community of artisans on the Design Boom website repurposing real cassettes into dresses, money clips and, in a pleasing confluence of eighties retro trends, Transformer-style toys.

Perhaps the most pleasing example of trend is the Mix tape USB stick which offers creative romantics the chance to once again serenade their special someone with a carefully chosen selection of contemporary hits, this time on a USB flash drive secreted cunningly in a vintage cassette-shaped box.

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