Flick on Maori Television and watch Pio Terei and Stacey Morrison walk in the footsteps of broadcasting legend Selwyn Toogood in a remake of It's In The Bag, the Kiwi game show we thought had died in 1992.
What brand of car are you driving? Chances are it was abandoned to the past and then resurrected as the latest must-have in motoring. BMW brought back the Mini, Volkswagen reinvented the Beetle and Chrysler brought back the Dodge Dart. Next year, Nissan will revive the Datsun.
Hollywood, rarely accused of having original ideas, has become even more enamoured with the past. No film or TV show is buried deep enough to rest in peace. Last year alone, Tinseltown toured at least four decades with remakes of Gambit, Sparkle, 21 Jump Street and Total Recall. Witness the reboot of 90s teen-angst classic Beverly Hills 90210, complete with appearances by the original stars Jenny Garth and Shannon Doherty.
TV execs even tugged Larry Hagman from his twilight years to reprise his role as J.R. Ewing for the Dallas reboot.
Why is the past leaking into the present? Artist Dick Frizzell, known for creating and using iconic images in his art, suspects it is a reaction to recent history. "During the period of modernism, everything swept along at such a rate that I think there's now a bit of taking stock," he says.
The prolific printmaker, who established the Four Square man as a pillar of Kiwiana, says the rush for the new has ceased so we can "pause to take a breath".
These days we are so uninterested in moving forward that we are begging to be sold more products from the past. On social-media websites, you can join a campaign to Save the Snifter or support Operation Tang - an attempt to convince Cadbury to bring back the classic cinema candy. Why not throw your weight behind the Facebook-based Bring Back Bluebird Murphy Cut Salt & Vinegar Chips Campaign, or join the irreverent Beige Brigade in clinging to the uniform and ethos of New Zealand's 1980s cricket teams?
Retromania is being embraced by companies, says Richard Brookes, an associate professor at the University of Auckland Business School.
"Organisations are under pressure to come up with innovative ideas because of the economic situation," he says.
Reviving an old product can also be safer than launching a new one. This can reduce everything from development to marketing costs. Plus, there's the opportunity to invoke the power of nostalgia.
Marketers continue to try to prove that we are sentimental creatures, and that exploiting our yearning for yesterday can result in ringing tills.
Amber Johnson would be their perfect case study. The 36-year-old Upper Hutt woman's warm childhood memories of gobbling Choco-ades, along with her husband's craving for the biscuits, prompted her to launch a Facebook campaign calling for their resurrection.
"Choco-ades were a treat we had with my Nana in the school holidays," she explains as her two children squirm around her. "I just have nice memories."
Her campaign gathered the support of more than 2000 other fans who shared 20-year-old memories of deconstructing the biscuit's layers, demolishing them at birthday parties and feasting on them when their parents brought home discounted boxes of broken biscuits. "It took us by storm," says Griffin's marketing and business development director Josette Prince. "We used our own social-media channels to see if the broader New Zealand public was also keen to see them back."
Ten months on and demand for the biscuit continues. "They've now made $4.5 million," Prince says, an element of surprise in her voice.
They are the third best-selling chocolate biscuit in New Zealand supermarkets, she says.
Which begs the question: if they were so good, why were they dropped in the first place? "People like variety and you only have so much room on the shelves," Prince says. "As you bring out new products you have to make the decision to retire other products."
The problem with nostalgia is it can be fleeting - just ask Bob Geldof. This year, the Irish musician and political activist announced he was reviving his 70s band The Boomtown Rats. The news garnered the appropriate press and a tour, including Australia and New Zealand, was planned.
But by the time dates were announced, the renditions of I Don't Like Mondays had been hummed and forgotten, and fans failed to buy up tickets.
The band cancelled the New Zealand concert and five Australian performances.
Recent film history is also littered with sob stories. Memories of Arnold Schwarzenegger busting his way through the 1990 film, Total Recall, were not enough to blind critics to the failures of last year's version, and Gambit reviewers wondered why the original had been sullied by a pointless remake.
"Nostalgia is never enough," says Auckland University's Brookes. "If you can't make the product relevant today then you can't succeed."
He says the worst-case scenario is when nostalgia works against your product: "You can end up with people saying, 'This isn't the same as the original. You should never have brought it back."'
TV producer Libby Hakaraia knows what it is to dice with reviving a national treasure. In 2009, she asked Selwyn Toogood's family if she could remake It's In The Bag. They told her to forget it - they had been approached endless times and had always said no because they wanted to protect Toogood's legacy. "Then I told them that we wanted to do it as a bilingual show for Maori TV," she recalls. "They loved that. It's not well-known but Selwyn Toogood had Ngai Tahu ancestry."
The show triumphed and became one of Maori TV's top-rating shows. It is now in its fifth series.
Does Hakaraia thank the power of nostalgia for the success? "Thirty per cent of our success is down to the recognition that people have for It's In The Bag. The other 70 per cent is because we made a good show."
• Opinion: Let old flames die out in dignity
