Just In: Game Boy Classic Pins, Fandom in Miniature

It is a nice thought to end a run of arrivals on: the Game Boy long ago outgrew its role as mere technology and became a symbol. This arrival is a tiny, wearable piece of that afterlife, a set of collectible Game Boy Classic pins.

What It Is

Though long outdated as a piece of technology, the Game Boy has become a shorthand for the whole of the 1990s, living on in pins, phone covers, T-shirts and endless other everyday objects. These little enamel pins are one small example of that lasting fan culture, worn on jackets and bags by people keeping a flag flying for the console affectionately nicknamed The Brick. They belong to the same broad category as the collection's various other tribute and merchandise items: not products of Nintendo's heyday, but proof of the devotion that outlived it.

Fandom in miniature: enamel badges keeping the console alive as a 90s icon.

Why It Joined the Collection

Fan-made and fan-worn items matter to the collection because they measure something the official products cannot: how much people still care. Pins, patches and the like are the grassroots end of Game Boy culture, the way ordinary enthusiasts choose to carry the console with them. Keeping a set here rounds out the picture, from the original 1989 hardware right through to the badges people pin on today, and quietly makes the point that runs through the whole collection: the Game Boy never really went away.

The Game Boy Classic pins are documented, with photographs, on their own page in the collection.