17 Retro School Supplies We Wish Were On Our Shopping Lists

Forget iPads and hand sanitizer. As back-to-school shopping starts up, these are the school supplies we remember fondly.

1. Cardboard Pencil Boxes

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No stronger than a shoe box, these things were usually falling apart by October. But they were a great place to stash your scented stickers, forbidden gum and, yes, sometimes your pencils.

2. 10-Color Pens

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Because why write folded-up notes in one color ink when you can use 10? It takes a rainbow to describe your feelings for your fourth-grade crush!

3. Anything Lisa Frank

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This '80s-cool brand has had a resurgence recently, so you can find fluorescent tigers in stores again. But nothing beats the square-dancing teddy bears and wide-eyed ponies of our youth.

4. Trapper Keepers

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Choosing your Trapper Keeper was serious business. Ten-year-olds don't make many nine-month-long commitments—how were you supposed to know how you'd feel about a Caribbean sunset a year from now? Ultimately, you just had to take a leap of faith.

5. Rubber Cement

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We were less likely to use this for craft projects than for wadding up into balls to throw at our nearest desk mates. Which we would pretend were boogers. Ahh, elementary school.

6. Push-a-Point Pencils

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It turns out that it's much easier to sharpen a regular pencil than to use one of these guys, but they are certainly more styling than your standard No. 2s.

7. Pee Chee Folders

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Before the days of customized ring tones, we customized Pee Chees. Taking these athletes from drab to fab could take all year long.

8. Mr. Sketch Scented Markers

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Mmm, the tangy scent of that light blue raspberry marker. If we close our eyes, we can still smell it now.

9. Pink Pearl Erasers

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Because there used to be a thing called "handwriting" where people made "mistakes" and there was no "delete button."

10. Metal Lunch Box and Matching Thermos

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Kids, back in the day our moms didn't pack us elaborate bento-style lunches that they photographed, hashtagged and added to Instagram. Instead we got a peanut butter sandwich and a Twinkie tossed into one of these.

11. Old-School Jansport Backpacks

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These days you are more likely to find kids wheeling their backpacks down the street or carrying something a bit more ... stylish. But old-school Jansports still sell for a pretty penny on Etsy and eBay!

12. Hand-Held Pencil Sharpeners

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While these still grace some supply lists, many classrooms have electric sharpeners and others are doing less and less with pencils and paper!

13. Floppy Disks

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These used to be essential for saving your crush lists for all eternity. Oh, and your English homework too.

14. Husky Pencils

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These old-school pencils were thicker and sturdier than today's yellow fare. You know, to withstand those walks to and from school, uphill, in the snow, both ways.

15. Erasable Pens

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The erasable pen is not really very good at being a pen or being erasable, so it's somewhat understandable that it has fallen by the wayside. But we'll forever remember the novelty of doing math homework in ink!

16. Flashcards

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Nowadays, there's an app for that, but we remember toting around these decks to learn everything from multiplication to the periodic table of the elements.

17. Calculator Watches

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Today's kids have smartphones that they can more or less use to program rocket launches. We had calculator watches that could do very simple calculations AND tell the time. I think we know who the winner is here.