Canadians’ embrace of vintage products is selective and pragmatic. Betamax, rotary dial phones, eight-track tapes and cathode-ray tube televisions are unlikely to crawl out of the dustbin.

Retreat, rebellion and romance drive people into the arms of products old enough to have acquired a whiff of the exotic but young enough to remain functional.

“Many of these products offer some sort of retreat from the digital world insofar as they offer a return to older and quite different tactile sensations and experiences,” Gruneau says.

“Audiophiles tell you that vinyl has a warmth that MP3s can never match, toys are tactile in ways that video games are not. Printed books are also tactile, tangible and esthetically pleasing objects.”

Vintage products also provide a way to rebel against mainstream digital culture. They’re a way to make fashion statements and declarations of identity, he says.

Technologies such as pinball speak to the romance of a lost world, Gruneau says — and to an underlying sense that Google is not God.

“It has something to do with the sense of unease that many people have about the omnipresence of the digital world, the belief that a balanced life requires engaging with objects and technologies that offer some respite from that world.

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