Sony farewells the cassette Walkman

The Sony TCM-450 cassette Walkman.
(Credit: Sony)

After 33 years of life, Sony has finally discontinued production of its line of cassette Walkmans.

In a "wow, they were still making those?" kind of news, Sony is finally retiring its range of cassette Walkmans, according to Japanese news website Akihabara News.

The three devices in question — the TCM-400, the TCM-410 and the TCM-450 — seem to have not been available in western Sony stores for some time. The cassette Walkman will go to rest in Japan, the same place it came into the world.

It's not quite the end of the cassette, though: Sony (and other manufacturers) will continue to produce tape decks and boom boxes, though we suspect it won't be for long now. But while the CD and the MP3 are undoubtedly superior in many ways, we'll always harbour a fond nostalgia for the plastic sound of the cassette snapping into the tape player, hours spent recording mixtapes from the radio ... and even spooling chewed tape back in with a pencil.

http://www.cnet.com.au/sony-farewells-the-cassette-walkman-339342743.htm