Awesome Cassette Tapes

This retro wallet from Fydelity features an exterior made from the shell of a cassette tape. Its body is made from synthetic leather with a zippered main compartment for cards, cash, coins, and more. Available in a variety of colors – our fave is the shiny rainbow-chrome finish.

FiiO is known for its high-fidelity digital audio gear. Now, they’ve gone retro with the CP13, a portable cassette player that pays tribute to the classic Sony Walkman. The silvery-blue gadget works much like cassette players of yore, only playing via wired headphones, but it has a built-in rechargeable battery. Drops spring 2024 for about $150.

These unique dice from Aether Objects are made from cassette tapes. Each die has strips of vintage cassette tape preserved forever inside see-through resin. Their embossed numbers are painted with a vibrant yellow inspired by ’80s cassette graphics. Sold in a set of seven dice and packed in a cassette-style storage box.

This pocket-sized musical instrument from MicroKits is an analog synthesizer shaped like a cassette tape. It has a touch-sensitive 13-key keypad, which you can connect to other objects (like bananas) to turn them into keys. It’s got a built-in 1-watt speaker, a headphone jack, and controls for pitch, volume, octave shift, and a vibrato effect.

Get your groove on in the kitchen while you scrub pots and pans with Fred’s playful cassette tape dish sponges. The set includes four 3″ x 4.5″ sponges packaged in a cardboard boombox. Crank up your favorite retro playlist while doing your dishes with these.

Techmoan shows off another strange bit of 1980s tech. The Magic Message was a cassette tape player attached to a remote transducer and designed to play audio descriptions of products when a salesperson wasn’t available. It had suction cups and was designed to be installed inside of a window.

Scott & Heather of Scavenging Metal create amazing art inspired by pop culture. One of our faves is this steel cassette tape that’s five times larger than the real thing. We love the details like the ball-bearing reels and tape made from chain. Oh, and next Halloween, we’re totally going with their propane tank jack-o’-lanterns.

DOIY Design and Haniboi’s playful wallet is a throwback to the good old cassette tape. While it won’t play you a mix, it will hold your spare change, bills and cards. It’s made from pliable silicone, and comes in grey, teal, neon yellow, and coral. And yes, it has both an “A” side and a “B” side.

Celebrate your love for old-school cassette tapes with this useful desktop organizer caddy. Instead of magnetic recording tape, it holds sticky Scotch tape, and it’s got storage cubbies for pens, pencils, thumbtacks, or other small items. Available with a grey, blue, or pink label.

Ready for a trip back to the 1980s? The guys at We Are the Mutants spotted this gem of a commercial that perfectly captures the sci-fi aesthetics of the era. This big budget ad spot that implies General Electric’s cassette tape players will free the oppressed was obviously influenced by Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl spot.

It’s been 40 years since the Sony Walkman first came on the scene, and since been supplanted by CDs, MP3s, and streaming. But if you’re craving that old cassette tape sound, NINM Lab’s portable player/recorder has Bluetooth 5.0, so you can wirelessly send its sounds to a speaker or headphones. Sadly it’s not stereo.

Techmoan dug up another relic of unusual tech from the 1980s, a boombox from Japanese electronics company National that sported not one or two tape decks, but three. It’s basically the “this one goes to 11” of cassette players. Also, once he cracked it open to perform some repairs, he discovered a mechanical nightmare.

Techmoan takes a look at another fascinating bit of retro technology, an alternative approach to portable audio tapes that was being developed by Sanyo at the same time that Philips was working on the cassette tape. We love the heft of that old player.

A fantastic concept design for a cassette player with a slick and minimal playback mechanism. Sure, the sound quality of cassettes leaves a lot to be desired, but the sheer novelty of such a player might make us dig out our old ’80s mix tapes once again.

Techmoan digs up all kinds of strange and wonderful “high-tech” stuff from the past. One of the crazier items has to be this cassette tape which defeated the entire purpose of a cassette, making you load in tiny reels of tape. Perhaps this was the precursor to the fidget spinner.

Techmoan checks out an awesomely complex bit of 1970s tech. The Panasonic RS-296US used a mechanical carousel filled with 20 extra-long cassette tapes to allow for up to 2.5 days of continuous music. There was no way to select individual tracks, but you could choose tapes.

A while back, we featured Taybles’ awesome, but pricey cassette tape coffee table. They recently launched a Kickstarter to bring down the cost so more of us can enjoy one, complete with the hidden compartment, drink holders, and dry erase top for customizing your mix.

Along with vinyl, cassette tapes are staging their own comeback, with ongoing interest from electronic musicians who find the analog sound and hiss complements rather than detracts from their music. The Vinyl Factory explores this growing movement. (Thanks Paul!)

Inventor and musician Jeremy Bell demonstrates the latest version of his musical instrument, a DIY rig that lets him scratch sounds from old magnetic cassette tapes, offering a cool alternative to playing on turntables.

Mix tape aficionados and children of the ’80s can keep the dream alive with a pair of Fred & Friends little magnetic bookmarks. Enjoy using the excess ribbon to mark your page, instead of attempting any more messy manual rewinds with a pencil.

It’s official. Disney will release a limited edition replica of the Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Mix Vol. 1 cassette tape. It will be exclusive to Record Store Day outlets from 11/28 to 12/31 and will come with a digital copy of the album.

Neil Steven’s poster collection was inspired by 80s cassette tapes, with their sober typography and color palettes mixed with indecipherable marketing blurbs that only engineers would appreciate. Brings you back, doesn’t it?

These cassette tape coffee tables made by Taybles can hold a lot of your favorite tapes and other stuff, thanks to steel cup holders and a drawer. Customize its parts to create your own mixtape.