Maybe it's about taking old school toys and changing something about them to communicate that nostalgia isn't an accurate way to look at the past but just something we turn to because current day is crappy.

There is a twisted nostalgia to Gatenby’s paintings. His work subverts not only through subject matter, but also through technique. Gatenby distorts familiar characters, typically drawn as brightly-coloured and crisp cartoons, by blurring lines between classical painting and modern imagery. As with a lot of appropriation art his work inherently says something about its time as it reflects collective imagery back onto society, reanalysing information in a sort of mirror."

Can I find a way to create an installation that allows you to look at something which shows the rose tinted view of nostalgia which is see through like this artists work and once you rush in to experience nostalgia you are face with what it covers up - either how the past really is or how nostalgia is exploited to encourage consumerism in capitalism. Could use anaglyph effect - stereoscopic 3D effect achieved by means of encoding each eye's image using filters of different (usually chromatically opposite) colors, typically red and cyan. Anaglyph 3D images contain two differently filtered colored images, one for each eye. (Think Stefan Sagmeisters dog book cover.)

"a threat to control (i.e., a lowered sense of control) led to greater nostalgia relative to the absence of this threat [34]. Furthermore, a threat to belongingness also boosted nostalgia [35]. These threats can in turn lead to greater experienced nostalgia and purchase of nostalgic products [36∗] or enjoyment of nostalgic movies [37]. Nostalgia is an important part of the chain of how consumers resolve threats"

"As part of their study; Muehling and Sprott (2004) collated individuals’ cognitive responses that were exposed to either a nostalgic or non-nostalgic advertisement. It is worth to mention that the results identified there was a greater number of positive nostalgic thoughts that were generated via a nostalgia condition than via a non-nostalgia condition." Page 7

"Questions recalling experiences that carry with them a highly rewarding or highly pumitive stimulus. (easier to remember) 7:00

"Habituated experiences - low stimulus - short term memory - your brain chooses to ignore it. Sensitised experiences - physical change takes place in the nucleus of your brain cell. Strengthens communication between cells resulting in longer term memory. Long term memory doesnt just stick with you. It IS you. 7:20 DR Eric Kandel initially discover this.

"From the perspective of marketing and consumer research, it would seem that nostalgia has become to signify almost the opposite of its origins; from malady to a pleasurable (and readily packageable) sensation (Cervellon and Brown, 2018b)." Page 6

"In a full production of its own temporal simulation, retro, in contrast to vintage and personal nostalgic objects which retain some indexicality to their historical context, plucks artefacts from history and strips them bare of all their problematic de facto historical context. We believe that retro revives inert temporal imaginations, turning them into zombified spectacles as part of the marketized myth of commodified authenticity (also Hietanen et al., 2020a). And the more the retro-necromancer (Brown, 2009) resurrects the past, the more the past will likely haunt us, a painful reminder of what we desperately seek to fend off." Page 7

"In these “conditions of digital recall, loss is itself lost” (Fisher, 2014: 2), and they now mark a past short-circuited and outside collective remembrance as digital technology comes to remember, control, and market an algorithmically splintered “dividual” of us and for us (Arvidsson, 2016; Cluley and Brown, 2015; Hietanen et al., 2020b). As Jean Baudrillard (1998) noted, “When everything can be seen, nothing can be foreseen any more” (p. 2), pointing to an obsessional reviving and reliving, a simulation of a virtual history, a retrovirus, history as ghosts (also Tanner, 2016)." Page 11

"We thus see the desire for retro consumption as a far more desperate desiring impulse—a largely unconscious attempt to reinsert a sense of history in culture that has largely occluded it, to invoke any depth in history. Indeed, “nostalgia that is now so pervasive may best be characterized not as a longing for the past so much as an inability to make new memories” Page 11

"it is important to recognize that hauntology characterizes a general cultural atmosphere of late stage capitalism. Indeed, to be a marketing scholar today is in effect to exercise hauntology, a half-lost remembering that we no longer participate in the optimisms of the past, as the happy days of marketing have increasingly evaporated along with the promise of liberation via consumption (also Takhar, 2020)." Page 13

“The funny thing is nostalgia requires separation, a distance in time and an acceptance that whats gone is unretrievable. Otherwise, the spell doesn’t work. All we can do is examine our memories – a souvenir, a song, a home movie, the comforting glimpse of the way we were through a window, separate, distant and with. A longing that can never be cured. And remind ourselves that we’re an infinite product of where we’ve been, that memories are real even if they no longer exist. They happened and disappeared, and we kept something from them.” 7:47

"In sum, nostalgia can induce different behaviors from consumers, as it fulfills their different needs. Therefore, identifying the factors that promote an agentic versus a communal individual’s positive attitude toward nostalgia is important, because it will help marketers to develop persuasive nostalgic messages depending on consumers’ different types of self-concept" Page 2

"Pondering nostalgic moments facilitates recollectionsof positive self-images and thus increases self-esteem (Hartet al., 2011; Vesset al., 2010; Wildschutet al., 2006; Zhouet al., 2008)." Page 2

"We investigated the nostalgia effect through enhancement of not only social connectedness but also self-positivity, which has so far been under-researched as a function of nostalgia, especially in the field of consumer psychology.The results of the two experiments indicate that agentic individuals become more favorable toward a nostalgic target because they feel enhanced self-positivity, whereas communal individuals become more favorable toward the nostalgic target because they feel enhanced social connectedness" Page 7

"The interactive processes between different types of self-concepts (i.e., agentic and communal)and functions of nostalgia (i.e., self-positivity and social connectedness) on consumer behavior and decision-making should be important in various contexts. While the current research emphasized advertising and public campaign con-texts, the theorization and findings reported here are potentially applicable to other consumption or communication contexts in which persuasive nostalgic messages may be designed to influence message recipients’ behavior or deci-sions" Page 8

"Moreover, accord-ing to Stern (1992), nostalgia marketing is more useful andeffective when consumers are worried about the present,regard the future as dark, and wish to go back to thehappiness of the“old days.” Page 8

However, we anticipate that nostalgia’s impact on youthfulness will be moderated by age. Research indicates that the tendency for people to view themselves as younger than their chronological age emerges as a function of entering into adulthood and tends to appear in the late 20s and early 30s (Galambos, Turner, & Tilton-Weaver, Citation2005), but is most pronounced among middle-aged and older adults (Montepare & Lachman, Citation1989; Rubin & Berntsen, Citation2006). Abstract

“Nostalgia in any form wasrelatively rare two centuries ago. Until moderntimes, few people travelled further than a day’swalk from their place of birth and most livedmuch as did their parents or grandparents.Time was experienced mostly as a cycle ofseasons and festivals, disrupted only byunwelcomed events like war or naturalcatastrophe. With little movement or change,there was not much to be nostalgic about.”

“It represents a longingfor the goods of the past that came from apersonal experience of growing up in thestressful world of “fast capitalism,” a particularlyintensive form of commodity culture, entailingthe increasingly rapid pace of production andpurchase, creating profit through the fastturnaround of investment. Stress resulted fromthis distinctly modern phenomenon – peoplefound identity and meaning in specific goods,but, as a result, felt that their selfhoods werethreatened when those things disappeared. Thislonging was often rooted in the formative yearsof consumers – that of childhood and youth.”

"When it comes to marketing, experiential marketing has gained a lot of customer attention (Ju et al., 2016). Experiential marketing of a product is done by making use of the emotional aspects of the customers. Nostalgia marketing comes under the concept of experiential marketing. Here, people's feelings and emotions create an emotional link between the consumer and the product." Page 1

"Toys themselves can create nostalgic connections with customers. Companies producing toys need not modify the toys made by them to bring about nostalgic feelings in customers. Toys are usually purchased by parents or elders, which are in turn given to children. So, there is an opportunity available for the toy manufacturers to use these nostalgic emotions of the parents to create an intention of purchase for toys within them."

"There are three orders of nostalgia, simple nostalgia on the idea that the life that existed in the past was better and portraying an emotion of returning to it. Then reflexive nostalgia in which a person questions if the past were more superior than the present. Lastly, interpreted nostalgia where individuals compare their past with the present while incorporating the past experiences to augment the current life (Davis, 1979)."

"This positive attitude and attachment towards the toys are leading to purchase intention. Thus, nostalgia marketing can increase the sales of toys. Here, marketers need to consider the parents' nostalgic emotions and other older people who buy toys for children." Page 9