Chip Chick
Want a phone with a retro rotary layout, but without the novelty of a truly retro appearance or actual rotary functionality? Your long, arduous search is finally at an end.
The VTech Retro Phone is a sleek cordless landline phone with a completely modern appearance outside of the rotary-style dial layout of the numbers. It’s not actually a rotary phone – those are all push-buttons – so VTech is relying on the rotary look alone for retro cred. The small display on the base shows caller information, and serves as a charging station for the handset. Speakers for speakerphone functionality are located on both the base and the handset.
What’s really interesting is how niche of a product this is. You have to whittle down the number of buyers to people actually interested in still having a landline. Then, you take out the people uninterested in retro. Then, you have to weed out the retro purists who will balk at this phone’s modern appearance. How many people does that leave as a viable market? Who knows, but hopefully for VTech all those remaining people will still be willing to pay the $60 price tag.
