The likes of Polaroid cameras and Commodore 64 computers may feel like obsolete fragments of history, but these classics of their times have actually resurfaced in recent years. Click or scroll through to take a look at some once-dead products that have made a comeback by popular demand.

The first mass-market video games console, the Atari 2600 was launched in 1977 and sold by the truckload – Atari controlled 80% of the video games market by 1982. It wasn't to last, however. The market crashed in 1983 and Atari stopped developing games for the 2600 the following year.

A saturated market and overabundance of poor-quality games, including the infamous E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, precipitated the crash. Despite this, Atari fandom persisted and, in 2004, Atari released a plug-and-play version of the 2600 called Atari Flashback, which is still in production today, retailing at around $55 (£44).

The Swan Teasmade woke up hundreds of thousands of people in the UK (where else?) with a nice cup of tea for decades – until it went out of fashion in the 90s. Quietly discontinued, the gizmo made its final brew in 2001.

Much to the relief of its dedicated fans, the Swan Teasmade was revamped and relaunched by Swan Products in 2010. Still going strong, the product is available in modern and retro-styled (pictured) versions and sells for around £69 ($88).

A major craze in the late 1990s, kids couldn't get enough of these unusual-looking furry robots. In fact, Hasbro's Furby was the most wanted toy in 1998 and 1999, so much so that almost 16 million were sold in these two years alone.

The craze died down in the early 2000s and production more or less halted. Hasbro reintroduced the toys in 2005 and in 2012 the company released an internet-connected Furby with its very own app, sparking a new, albeit smaller, craze. Fast food chain McDonald's has consistently cashed in on the toys' popularity, and Furby-themed Happy Meal toys were launched again in 2019. The most valuable bunch are those that were given away back in 2000, and a complete set of 12 is worth up to $900 (£745).

The piece of furniture that heralded the flat-pack revolution, the Lövet table was IKEA's first product that buyers had to put together themselves. The three-legged table was launched in 1956 and soon became one of the Swedish furniture firm's best-selling models.

With mid-20th-century furniture design all the rage, IKEA re-engineered and relaunched the Lövet table in 2013. Now known as the Lövbacken table, it is available in the UK, the Netherlands and from selected IKEA stores worldwide.

Are you a fan of IKEA products? Then these IKEA facts may surprise you

The Raleigh Chopper bike featured on many a Christmas wishlist back in the 1970s – it guaranteed instant street cred for kids at the time. Manufactured in Nottingham, England, 1.5 million of the bikes were sold before production ground to a halt in 1979.

 

A limited-edition version of the popular bike was brought back in 2014, with just 400 being created. Pictured here is the special edition model, which retailed at £250 ($325). Re-releases of classic models have continued since.

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum cornered the home computer market in the UK during the early 1980s. The PC was launched in 1982 and remained in production for 10 years.

Though some people don't miss waiting hours for games to load or the fact that some of the keys would fall out of the keyboard if it was turned upside down, the ZX Spectrum has a cult following and was recreated in 2015 by a company called Elite Systems. The rehashed version sells for £100 ($127).

One of the defining denim styles of the 20th century, the 505 was launched by Levi Strauss & Co. in 1967, although it didn't become popular until around the early 1970s. This particular fit was favoured by achingly cool bands such as Ramones and Blondie but, as they faded out of fashion, so did the jeans.

The style, which fits slim but not too skinny, was resurrected by Levi's in 2016 and has been recreated to the last detail – the Levi's design team even tracked down the original fabric mill to reproduce the specific denim material. Known as the 505™C, the jeans are a "straight-line DNA descendent of what you see on the Ramones," Jonathan Cheung, SVP Global Design at Levi's, told Esquire in 2016. That definitely puts the gene in jean.

Polaroid started making cameras in 1948, and at its peak the OneStep Polaroid was America's best-selling camera of 1977. In the days before digital, a camera that could process photos instantly was a huge boost for amateur photographers. However, digital cameras increased competition and a steady decline in sales led to the company filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001. Polaroid cameras came to an end in 2005, with film being produced until the end of 2009.

But a group known as The Impossible Project decided that they needed to act before Polaroid film disappeared forever. In May 2017 they acquired the brand and intellectual property of the Polaroid Corporation and took over its last remaining factory in the Netherlands. Buoyed on by the trend for all things analogue and old school, they revived the OneStep. Popular with fashion photographers and artists, the camera was sold as part of a limited-edition kit priced at $470 (£360) and nowadays most camera brands are churning out Polaroid imitations for a hungry younger audience looking to give their Instagram pages a vintage vibe.

The Nokia 3310 was a classic mobile phone and one of Nokia's best-sellers. The iconic device was launched in 2000, and sold 126 million handsets, but the dawn of the smartphone meant that the style was phased out. However, despite over two billion people owning smartphones globally, some remember the simplicity of their Nokia phone fondly, and in 2018 someone searched for a Nokia 3310 every three minutes on eBay.

In 2017, Nokia decided to make the most of the nostalgia, launching an updated version of the phone. While not exactly the same as the original – it boasts a colour screen and an updated version of the classic game Snake – it still doesn't offer internet access or apps such as WhatsApp, and so it still captures some of the simplicity of its predecessor. It also boasts a battery life of a whole month.

SodaStream was huge news back in the 1980s – no kitchen was complete without its very own SodaStream taking pride of place on the counter. But by the 1990s the brand was beginning to lose its fizz and it began to fade into obscurity.

Recently, SodaStream has had a comeback. In 2018 PepsiCo purchased the company for $3.2 billion (£2.5bn) and since then it’s rebranded itself as a sustainable alternative to disposable bottles of carbonated drinks. The revolutionised product is called the One Touch and its slick design takes a big step away from its now-retro 80s ancestors.

Sony bought into the trend for nostalgia and released a version of the original 1994 PlayStation console in time for Christmas 2018, called PlayStation Classic. This 'new' version of the console has 20 preloaded games from the era, such as Battle Arena Toshinden, Grand Theft Auto, and Tekken 3.

The Classic looks exactly like the original, even down to the packaging, but those who truly remember the first version will notice that the console is 45% smaller. It retails at $65 (£50) online. 

The Sega Genesis (known as Sega Mega Drive outside North America) was the top-selling console of the time and had some great games – who could forget Sonic the Hedgehog? A total of 30.75 million Sega consoles were sold worldwide, but the device was discontinued in 1997, losing out to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in the so-called console wars of the late 1990s.

Luckily for fans, in September 2019 Sega released a miniature Sega Genesis replica called the Mega Drive Mini, which can be bought for around $60 (£45). The remake includes 42 classic games pre-loaded onto the console, featuring the likes of Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Golden Axe.

The best-selling computer of all time, the Commodore 64 debuted in 1982 and sold in the millions. At the height of its popularity, CBM was producing as many as 400,000 PCs a month and the computer was a familiar sight in many homes worldwide.

The 8-bit PC was outclassed by its 32-bit rivals in the early 1990s and production of the Commodore 64 ceased when CBM filed for bankruptcy in 1994. In 2018, however, it made a comeback as the C64 Mini, which could be plugged into a TV. Following a successful crowdfunding campaign, a full-size replica of the original C64 hit stores in December 2019.

Kodak first developed the Super 8mm film camera in 1965 as a replacement for the Standard 8mm film camera. The camera and its film format became the default for motion pictures at the time, until video cameras became popular in the 1970s.

However, with the resurgence of analogue film and blockbuster movies including Oscar-winning La La Land using Super 8 film rather than digital, Kodak decided to revive the camera. Announced in January 2016, a small limited-edition batch of the new Super 8 camera is finally set to go on sale later this year, before a standard version is released. While it remains an analogue camera, the new version has a modern twist, featuring a digital viewfinder that Kodak hopes will help boost its appeal with filmmakers who have only used digital cameras until now. 

Immortalised in the Back to the Future movies, the head-turning car with the wow factor gull-wing doors was only in production for three years. The DeLorean DMC-12 was discontinued in 1982 following the company falling into financial difficulties.

Fast-forward to 2021 and the DeLorean DMC-12 is on the comeback trail, albeit slowly. DeLorean planned to start selling the cars back in 2016 but the company had to wait for the final steps in a legislative change before the cars could be legally produced. But following a lawsuit over the failure of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to submit the proposal for legislation changes to allow manufacturers to make replica cars, the NHTSA finally released a document with the proposed changes in late 2019. However, the pandemic means that we may have to wait a little longer to see new DeLoreans on the road. In fact, recent rumours suggest the new model might be all-electric.

Feeling nostalgic now? Then take a look at these surprisingly valuable things from the year you were born