Walkies!
Sony has finally stopped making its iconic cassette Walkman after a solid run of 30 years.
While many people consigned tapes to the bin a while back even before the days of MP3s, Sony said it shipped its last batch of portable cassette players in April and once they're gone, they're gone for good.
Sony first made its Walkman in 1979 and has since shifted an amazing 400m worldwide. The Japanese tech giant said exactly 200,020,000 cassette models have been sold and they still stand out as one of the defining pieces of consumer tech in the 80s and even the early 90s.
As well as the first super-sized mobiles and yuppie-friendly personal organisers, the birth of cheap chips sparked a host of 80s gadgets from toys for grown-ups.
In fact, unbelievably the Commodore 64 is reportedly still the best-selling single computer model of all time, with sales of between 15m and 22m units. Owners of the first C64 might fondly remember its 64KB of RAM, 6510 processor, 16-color graphics and 20KB of ROM for $595.
Another best-seller sneaking in before the close of the decade was Nintendo's Gameboy, which according to geek.com shifted a staggering 118.69m units over its lifetime. Its dominance was relatively unchallenged (unless you count Sega Game gear) until recently with only Sony's PSPs stealing any handheld console market share.
In fact, the Gameboy's record sales were only recently beaten by Nintendo itself as its DS has sold128.89m units taking the crown as its best-selling handheld hardware.
And of course the decade was responsible for the birth of Apple, whose Macintosh computer hit the shelves in 1984. It even made TV history with a $1.5m advert reportedly directed by Ridley Scott and the rest as they say, is history.
Fans of retro gadgets and long-established brands will be pleased to know that the Walkman brand will live on as Sony will continue to manufacture CD and MD-based Walkmans as well as MP3 players.
Sony has also relatively recently axed another 80s consumer technology classic- the floppy disk, back in April.
