If it's retro, it's hot for the holidays

Urban Outfitters is bringing back Polaroids and Super 35 mm movie cameras.

Toys "R" Us is rerunning a television ad it aired in the '80s.

And retailers from Zappos to Forever 21 are stocking up on clothes and accessories from the 1960s and '70s.

Shopping has gone retro — again — this holiday season, with Lincoln Logs at Kohl's and turntables at Target. Macy's is stocking a cotton-candy machine with old-fashioned flair, while JCPenney is whipping out the Whoopee Cushion.

"It's retro-a-rama out there, to use a retro phrase," said Kit Yarrow, a professor of business and psychology at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. "People are looking for a safe haven these days, and anything retro feels warm and safe in these roller-coaster times."

Yarrow recently received an invitation to a 1970s-themed party that came with ideas on how to dress for it.

"What struck me," she said, "is the suggestions are exactly what's in stores today: maxi dresses, flowing skirts, gobs of jewelry, platform shoes and tight pants."

In retail, everything old can be new again. That includes nostalgia.

"There is never a time when we have no retro products," said Brooke Hyden, the style expert for Zappos.com. "But the trends right now are really drawing from the past, so we have an especially large collection this season. The '70s look is so hot right now, and we have a lot of Boho-'70s looks, 1970s ponchos, Mad Men-inspired dresses, and 1980s Fair Isle sweaters."

Hyden said people are particularly nostalgic around the holidays.

Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at the NPD Group, a marketing research firm based in Port Washington, N.Y., explained part of the appeal.

"Parents love to harken back to the simpler times of their childhood," he said, "and share the memories with their children."

But it's no passing fad, said Colleen Chapin, founder of Houston-based Hometown Favorites, an online store founded in 1996 to sell hard-to-find candy and other foods from decades past. Business has grown each year, Chapin said, first with baby boomers as key customers. Today, she added, more people in their 30s and 40s are ordering.

The music industry is selling nostalgia like never before, said Fred Allred, owner of AllRecords at 3211 Edloe in the Highland Village area. He has recently gotten in stock boxed gift sets, compilations or reissues for the Beach Boys, Ray Charles and Billy Joel.

"You listen to something you haven't heard in a long time, and it takes you right back," Allred said.

Kohl's has an array of retro clothes and such products for kids as miniature retro-style kitchens and the Morgan Cycle Retro Tricycle, spokeswoman Andrea Glatfelter said.

At Macy's, some gifts combine nostalgia with new technology, said spokeswoman Melissa Goff. For example, the Nostalgia Electrics Retro Series Cotton Candy Machine is shaped like a 1950s jukebox.

Toys "R" Us decided to bring back its 1980s TV ad as a way to create an emotional connection with parents and their kids and remind parents of their own feelings about Toys "R" Us products when they were children, said company spokeswoman Adrienne O'Hara. The commercial includes the Toys "R" Us jingle from that era.

Music and nostalgia are made for each other, Yarrow said.

"Our brain processes music differently than any other stimuli," she said. "We primarily ‘feel' music memories whereas we primarily ‘think' other kinds of memories. Marketers can get a ‘rub-off' effect by pairing the emotion created by retro music with new products."