10 Retro Promotional Items to Build Your Brand in Nostalgic Style

If you're looking for an effective marketing strategy to build your brand, promote your next big event, or reach out in any other way to potential customers, consider a giveaway with a retro feel. Nostalgia marketing is a great way to win over your target audience by evoking positive memories and helping them to share those memories with their friends and loved ones. A trip down memory lane, revisiting past eras, can be a powerful tool when it comes to building powerful relationships and emotional bonds between your brand and the public.

Ten Throwback Promotional Items - Top Picks

As we've already stated, going for an emotional response through nostalgia marketing is a great angle for most any business. An appreciation gift for employees or an era appropriate giveaway item for a specific promotion makes a memorable tool to help showcase the products and services your company provides. We encourage you to read through our top ten picks for the best retro promotional items for advertising, events, trade shows, and beyond.

1. Retro Specs

The first item we'll talk about that harkens back to the good old days comes in the form of our Retro Specs.These are fun and affordable accessories that can be handed out as free gifts as a part of your next promotion. Great as a giveaway for optometrists, clothing stores & other retail locations, trade shows, and more, these vintage sunglasses are always a hit with the crowd. 

They're sure to stand out anywhere they go, thanks to the vibrant colors that decorate their pinhole sticker lenses. Color also abounds on the frames, as they can be ordered in your choice of 12 different hues. A full color logo imprint is housed by the stickers, while additional imprints on the temples can be added for an upgrade fee. We encourage your company to order these items in bulk for your next promotion, especially since they ship 100% free of charge!

2. Bella + Canvas ¾ Sleeve Baseball Tee

Your company can also help its employees and customers to visit times past by offering vintage apparel items. Our logo imprinted baseball tees from Bella + Canvas are an excellent example. These ¾ sleeve promotional baseball style shirts can bring a little nostalgia into the world of sports teams and their fans. College, professional, and amateur athletes will love to wear these shirts, as will fans of fun fashion from simpler times. 

These retro yet on-trend shirts have contrast raglan sleeves and are designed with unisex sizing. Assorted color schemes and garment sizes are available. They can be ordered in sizes extra small through extra large, with 2XL being available for an upgrade fee. Each is imprinted with your team or business logo design on the left chest area, though full front area imprints can be ordered for an additional cost.

3. Phone Hand Fan

When you're searching for fun giveaways that can take consumers, clients, and employees for a walk down memory lane, a bit of obsolete technology can make for some great imagery. Our phone shaped hand fans illustrate this point quite effectively. These fun and popular accessories are formed in the shape of an old fashioned landline phone. The phones are formed from 16 point coated board stock and can be held upright and waved about by their 8 inch basswood handles.

These throwback promotional items can be handed out as giveaways & affordable advertisements for telecommunications firms, tech companies, mobile phone retailers, and much more. Personal hand fans are helpful for helping users to stay cool in muggy environments, both indoors and out. They work great as branded promotions at sporting events, auctions, graduation ceremonies, concerts, and more. Each one is imprinted with your logo design on one side without any kind of a set-up fee.   

4. Retro Lunch Box

Nostalgia marketing can be used to promote to potential customers of all ages. A cool retro advertising product that's also highly useful will be kept around to build your brand for a long time to come. If you need proof, look no further than our Retro Lunch Box. 

Great as promotional items for kids and adults alike, these high quality imprinted lunch boxes can bring back memories of past eras for adults as well as introduce children to a vintage relic of their parents' childhoods. Who doesn't miss the days where premium wireless sound wasn't required for a phone to be considered high tech?

Customers are sure to enjoy these durable lunch boxes, which are a convenient size at 8 inches wide by 6 inches high by 4 inches deep. Those dimensions offer plenty of space for packing snacks and lunches for work, school, road trips, picnics, hikes, and any other occasion. A full color imprinted decal covers the front panel of the box, with additional imprints in several areas being accessible for an upgrade fee. 

They have a low minimum order quantity of just 24 units, making them accessible as giveaways for businesses of almost any size. They pair up excellently with other promotional products, such as fanny packs and water bottles. Consider offering them together for an unbeatable back-to-school gift set! 

5. 15 oz Ceramic Campfire Mug

When only a product with a rustic, retro feel will do, our 15 oz Ceramic Campfire Mugs are there to answer the call. Great for both indoor and outdoor use, these vintage drinkware marketing items will see plenty of use while camping, putting in work at the office, lounging around the house, or showing off a branded logo over coffee at a diner.

These mugs come in your choice of 11 different colors. Each has a classic speckled design that creates a distinctly warm, rustic, and nostalgic aesthetic. They make ideal retro promotional items for diners, coffee bars, restaurants, outdoor lifestyle retailers, supermarkets, home furnishing shops, and more. They're easy to wash by hand and have a generous 15 oz capacity. We encourage you to include them in gift bags along with items such as camp shirts, drink mixes, s'mores kits, winter apparel, and other camping supplies. 

6. Wooden Fire Truck

Our personalized Wooden Fire Truck is one of four classic toys that has made its way into our picks for the top ten best retro promotional items. These toys make excellent gifts for children as well as for classic toy collectors. The heartstrings tug just a bit more tightly when a personal gift is received, especially when it's one that will spend countless hours creating happy childhood moments that will be treasured for a lifetime.

These wooden fire trucks have fully functional wheels that move smoothly for a pleasing play experience. They're painted bright red, with their paint job also including details such as windows, fire hoses, and ladders. They'll enjoy a high level of popularity when promoting a firehouse, daycare center, toy store, woodworking business, and most any other business or charity. 

A single color imprint on the top of the truck comes standard, with branding print colors being offered for an upgrade fee. 

7. Classic Wooden Yo-Yo

One of the biggest trends today among consumers is a desire to revisit the world they knew growing up. Whether the favorite decade of your customers happens to be the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, or any other point in yesteryear, chances are that yo-yos were a part of their "good old days". Hence, we offer our Classic Wooden Yo-Yos as one of our top throwback promotional products. These timeless toys will provide hours of fun to children and adults as they manage to get in some recreation that doesn't involve a computer or smartphone. 

Eco-friendly and retro marketing come together in one great item, as these yo-yos are made from natural and sustainable materials. Their natural wood color and white strings provide a simple look that's brimming with nostalgia. Each is laser engraved with your logo or other desired images. 

Toy stores, trade shows, schools, and lumber yards are just a few of the many locations and organizations that will find these to be the perfect gifts for marketing to targeted consumers.

8. Water Game Assortment

A mainstay of family road trips and carnival booths in the 1970s and 1980s, our assortment of custom Handheld Water Games are retro promotional items that will bring plenty of smiles to users' faces. Great as gifts for children and the young at heart, these classic portable games come in your choice of a red or blue color scheme. Two finger controls reside on the bottom front panel. These controls send a whoosh of air into the water-filled interior, enabling users to try their hand at shooting colorful triangles into a pyramid shaped target.

A great giveaway for an aquarium, water park, toy store, or retro gaming retailer, these products provide more than just a little nostalgia. They call back to the years of the rubik's cube and slap bracelets. Incidentally, custom rubik's cubes and promotional slap bracelets are both items we carry, so consider pairing them up with our Water Game Assortment for an unbeatable gift package!

9. Crazy Putty Eggs

In today's high-stress, high-tech society, there's a growing trend toward self-soothing and calming activities. Your marketing can target a crowd that's yearning for simpler times by providing them with our custom logo Crazy Putty Eggs. Very similar to the classic Silly PuttyⓇ, these items consist of colorful plastic egg shaped containers that hold a moldable putty in a matching color. The one exception is the red eggs, which contain putty in a natural tan color. 

These products are great for children as well as for physical and occupational therapy clients. They create a fun way for users to improve manual dexterity and fine motor skills while having a great time in the process. They're great promotional products for physical therapists, occupational therapists, carnivals & fairs, charity organizations, toy retailers, schools, and much more. They can also be passed out as giveaways at trade shows or as rewards for youngsters who are well-behaved during dental or doctor appointments. 

10. Female Hula Doll

The last of the retro promotional items on our top ten list are our personalized Female Hula Dolls. They make a wonderful appreciation gift or souvenir item, packing a high degree of instant heirloom potential. The dolls are made in a Tiki style and feature a Hula girl wearing a grass skirt and lei as she holds a ukulele. 

At 8 inches in height, these quaint promotional items can work as dashboard dancers or as mantelpieces. They swing about when tapped on the skirt or with the movement of a car along a bumpy road. 

These items are a great fit for any organization looking to engage in some nostalgia marketing. They're a particularly good fit as souvenir items for resorts, hotels, bars, restaurants, and any company with a tropical and/or Hawaiian motif. Your logo design will appear on the front of the round green base upon which the doll stands. 

Shop 4AllPromos for the best retro promotional products for reaching your audience!

We've now arrived at the end of our guide to the best personalized nostalgia gifts and retro promotional items. Hopefully we've given you some great ideas for promoting your brand, be it at your next big event or for more long-term advertising. If you have any questions about the products we've presented, feel free to reach out and contact a 4AllPromos sales rep at your earliest convenience. 

We'd love to help you get on the road to achieving your branding goals through marketing with a little nostalgia!