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USB 'compact cassette' promises 1980s nostalgia, home taping

Phony Sony, Maxel, TDK etc.

Relive music piracy the way it used to be done, back in the days when even Shawn Fanning was a glint in someone's eye*, let alone his original Napster app and the P2P world it spawned. Yes, we're talking cassette tapes and a 21st Century take on this format of yesteryear.

USB Mix Tape

USB Mix Tape: relive the 80s... the 80s.

It's a 64MB USB Flash drive that comes in a cassette-like box. UK retailer Firebox.com has six of them, all sporting different designs that almost but not quite match famous blank-cassette brands of two decades past.

Alas, you can't choose which one you get...

USB Mix Tape
USB Mix Tape

Is it real or is it Mock-xell?

The cassette unit itself is a moulded bay for the drive, but it's wrapped in a cardboard cover with space to write in the names of songs just like we all did in the Sixth Form years ago.

Not that nostalgia comes a cheaply as five-packs of C60s did: Firebox wants £20 for the USB Mix Tape. You can buy a no-name Flash drive that offers 64 times the capacity of this one for not much more than that price.

And the gadget could at least come in an old-style plastic case and inlay, we'd say.

Want to relive that 1980s vibe nonetheless? Then shuffle over to Firebox.com.

And don't forget, home taping is killing music...

* Well, just about. He was born in 1980.

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