From time to time old brands or product lines will be re-launched. Consider the winter 2012 returns of Vidal Sassoon, the return of the vintage Herbal Essences bottles, and the Furby 2012. To some extent this can be explained as a simple question of brand awareness. Launching a new brand is an expensive marketing problem, and bringing back a familiar old product is a short cut. But these companies aren’t just tapping into the knowledge of these brands. They’re also getting at a deeper kind of desirability. Nostalgia. To have been discontinued in the first place, these brands probably were not the most desirable things on the market, but psychologically, nostalgia can be a strong force in the decision to buy something. It isn’t surprising that brands from the nineties are returning. People who were children then are in now early adulthood, with money to spend.
