( CULTURAL BRIEFING N^O 07 )

The over-commercialisation of nostalgia in Singapore and Taiwan

_EN

            In hindsight, the 2010s were the last years of print’s golden era in Singapore — a little renaissance of tastemaking boutique design studios, if you will.

            The first brands capitalising on Singapore’s cultural visual markers from the 1980s and 1990s were born under such circumstances. You might be familiar with some of them — merlion 臭臭 plushies, icing biscuit and pineapple tart cushions, enamel pin badges with paraphernalia like Milo tins, ice kachang, etc.

            But the number of such brands kept growing, and increasingly, it felt like we were prematurely codifying our visual culture. It worried me. It still worries me. When a nation starts doing this at scale, it risks petrifying cultural markers while they are still in mid-bloom.

            Which is why I was saddened to witness the same happening to Taiwan after the Covid-19 pandemic. When one sees the same design souvenirs in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a tourist memorabilia gift shop in Jiufen, and a Japanese stationery retail chain in Singapore, the commercialisation of nostalgia has gone too far.

Notes from Ben:
This Cultural Briefing was first observed in Jan 2024, and written in Nov 2025. Slight revisions were made in Feb and Jul 2026.

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