Having personally witnessed the progress of personal portable audio equipment from the big cassette tape player to the walkman to the cd walkman to the mp3 players and mp4 players, I found it surprising that I still can see some folks lugging along these portable cassette tape players in their belts. I thought it has gone the way of the dinosaur.
Probably because of my assumption that they’re gone, I have not noticed that cassette tapes are still visible in the shelves of some music stores. After the subject of a cassette tape player was brought up by some friends in our latest get-together, I am again noticing that these relics are indeed still alive and still selling. I thus thought that as long as there are still cassette tapes in music stores, there still likewise would be cassette tape players. I recall that in our latest house cleaning I noticed a few tapes bundled in some boxes somewhere. I think those were Pimleur(?) cantonese language tapes which I bought after my aunt who got married to a Cantonese businessman in far away Malaysia visited us with her daughter. Since the tapes were still in good condition, I didn’t throw them away thinking that my kids or some friends might someday take an interest in learning cantonese. Nei hu ma?
Not only are we talking about actual music stores still displaying these players, they are similarly present online too. Google tells us that there indeed are still a considerable number of people searching for a cassette tape player online. Its other names include ‘cassette deck’ and ‘tape recorder’.
You can read more cassette tape player information from wikipedia.