People old enough to remember boom boxes, Renault's Le Car, the Sony Betamax and those clunky, primitive machines called typewriters probably haven't seen any of those items in years.
And younger folks might have never even heard of them.
"80s: All-American Ads" (Taschen, $39.99), edited by Jim Heimann, offers a pop-culture history course for youngsters and a refresher course for not-so-oldsters.
Between the book's flexible coated covers are 600 colorful pages with reproductions of thousands of print ads from the 1980s - for items from Apple computers to Zena jeans - that pretty much speak for themselves.
Answering the question, "What will they think of next?" are such innovations as a VW pickup truck, a movie called "Howard the Duck," portable phones (about the size of a large shoe), fuzzy brown produce called kiwifruit, and Digits finger watches.
"Dynasty" was a popular TV show of the decade, so it's only fitting that one of its stars, Linda Evans, was chosen to model a snazzy white suit from Nolan Miller's Dynasty Collection.
It's apparent that nothing could come between Brooke Shields and the Calvin Klein jeans seemingly sewn onto her, while a rotund and bearded Orson Welles assured us that "Paul Masson will sell no wine before its time."
A bespectacled young fellow identified as "William H. Gates III" touted The Wall Street Journal as being "user-friendly," while the "Jane Fonda's Workout" video had plenty of folks sitting up and grunting along.
"Bargains" included Kellogg's Marshmallow Krispies, whose ad featured a store coupon that would save the savvy shopper 15 cents on the next purchase; and a long-distance phone company's offer of a one-minute call to the United Kingdom for only $1.25, plus 76 cents for each additional minute.
And one of those newfangled home computers, the Apple III, boasted "up to 128K RAM." Just what did '80s people do with all that memory?
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Few things get old quicker than an electronic gadget. The "latest thing" has hardly been taken out of the box and its instruction manual figured out (sort of) before it has become obsolete, the victim of the latest "latest thing."
But wait! Don't throw out that purple iMac or pocket calculator, or that laserdisc player or tabletop Donkey Kong Jr. before checking its value in "Retro-Electro: Collecting Technology From Atari to Walkman" (Universe, $29.95) by Pepe Tozzo.
Featured are dozens of consumer electronic items from the past four decades, with color photos, brief background information and recent value ranges - in U.S. dollars and British pounds.
Find phono amplifiers and turntables, TV sets and video games, telephones and headphones, computers and eight-track players, and even those funky, psychedelic Lava lamps.
Some erstwhile electronic marvels bear household names: Commodore 64, Magnavox Odyssey, Mattel Intellivision, Apple Macintosh, Sony Watchman.
There are fairly recent items, too: digital camera, Palm Pilots, BlackBerrys, Xboxes, and the original iPod from 2002, one of which could fetch its seller up to $645.
Before the Walkman, there was the shirt-pocket radio. Shown is a Sony model from 1962, distinctive for its oversized, protruding speaker. Today, it's worth more than $300 - many times its original price.
A Motorola cell phone from 1984 looks like a black brick with an antenna on top, but still works on modern cell networks. Another peculiar sight is JVC's globe-shaped Videosphere TV from 1970, which resembles a space helmet and could be placed on a table or suspended from the ceiling.
A Magnavox music system from 1971 had an AM/FM receiver and played eight-track tape cartridges - but only until compact cassettes soon put eight-tracks six feet under.
PacMan was the rage of '80s arcades, but Coleco's table top version required no quarters to operate. However, it did cost $60 to buy, somewhat expensive in 1981 dollars.
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If it has anything to do with motor vehicles on four wheels - or on any number of wheels - it's probably in "The Big Book of Car Culture: The Armchair Guide to Automotive Americana" (Motorbooks, $24.95 paperback) by Jim Hinckley and Jon G. Robinson.
From bumper to bumper, this book covers some 150 topics related to motoring history, including cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles, as well as the road and the roadside - diners, drive-in movies, gas stations, coffee shops, road signs and road markings,
The text is accompanied by 400 illustrations - about half in color - that include photos, ads, and artifacts such as postcards, maps, magazine covers and bumper stickers.
Entries range from hood ornaments to tail fins, miniature golf to big rigs, the VW Beetle to the V-8 engine, the Chrysler Airflow to the Airstream trailer.
There are hearses and auto wreckers, restrooms and rental cars, and hot rods and hot dogs (the Wienermobile, that is).
The Good Humor truck is here, as are the Edsel and AMC Pacer, two cars with bad reputations.
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Shop among an array of everyday objects made and used in India through the richly colorful pages of "100 Percent India" (Chronicle, $29.95) by Catherine Geel and Catherine Levy.
Browse through pots, pans, pitchers, brushes, bottles, bags, boxes, toys, toiletries, tools and various others among the 200 items the authors found in Indian shops and markets between 1996 and 2003.
Introductory text covers the industrial history of India and describes characteristics of Indian products. Informative captions identify each piece shown, its composition and dimensions, and when and where it was acquired.
The front of the box containing Anil Atom Bomb Funnel fireworks shows a young girl holding her cheeks in alarm after one of these "particularly noisy" explosives has gone off nearby.
Colorful plastic of red, geen and blue is used in balls that clip onto bicycle spokes to create a tinkling sound when the wheels turn, and in-home faucets and connecting tubes.
A cube-shaped footstool is made to resemble a huge black die with white pips. A distinctive black-speckled finish adorns an aerodynamically styled electric iron.
There are plastic combs designed for removing head lice, and plastic and wire brushes to clean the combs. Cans that once held automotive fuel additives seem an odd choice for recycling as coin banks.
There are babies' rattles, chapati rollers (used for making traditional Indian pancakes), bags of rubber bands, and rubber stamps and ink pads - "India" ink, perhaps?
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