Game Boy
There’s a certain type of nostalgia that doesn’t affect most people. Not the warm, fuzzy feeling you get from looking at faded photographs. We’re talking about the stuff that gets under your skin; that sits in your hands and the feeling of a certain button being pushed and hearing a certain sound. The weight. The exact weight of something you used to carry everywhere as a child and then, for some reason, forgot about.
The Game Boy does that to people. Adults in their thirties and forties pick one up and you can see something just click. That’s not the warm, fuzzy feeling we’re banking on. That’s the entire ethos behind this.
When we put this collection together, we did so because the gifts within it mean something. These aren’t products leveraging off a recognisable logo or colour scheme simply because they can. These are for the people who actually owned one. Who played Tetris or Pokémon until they went square from looking at the screen. Who can remember what the first one felt like; the exact shade of grey the original shell was and how that tiny screen looked in poor lighting. That kid is in almost every family. They’re in almost every friendship group. They’re also probably the hardest person you’ll ever need to buy a gift for; because they already own everything that they’ll actually want.
Quality was the most important thing to us. We wanted stuff that would last. We wanted to pourop that was made with pride and care. We didn’t want anything the second someone opened it; that a person would actually use or display rather than hide away. Novelty yarn silly hats are great – but anyone can find those. We wanted to discover the gifts that stop people and make them truly look; pick it up, hold it and feel something genuine about it.
Some of the things we’ve found are perfect for parents who now have kids of their own that they want to share something nostalgic with. Some of it is unabashedly for them; for people to enjoy on their own and finally feel like they’ve got something to reclaim that part of their childhood they loved so much. Then there’s a couple of things for those who didn’t own a Game Boy but saw one often enough growing up; catching glimpses of them over an older siblings shoulder or being dragged around by a friend who took theirs absolutely everywhere.
The Game Boy may have faded into obscurity. But it never went away. It’s just become the kind of thing that needs celebrating properly. These are the gifts that achieve just that.