Ripped From the Shelves and Our Hearts

This desire for the products of yesterday has even created a small cottage industry on the Web, such as eBay or Shop.com and in stores all across the country, like one in Weston, Vt., The Vermont Country Store.

Often, even when a product is discontinued, it is not gone forever.

(ABC News)

The Vermont Country Store was founded by the Orton family in 1946. It's now owned by the third generation Ortons -- Cabot, Gardner and Eliot.

According to Cabot Orton, they are the "purveyors of the practical and hard-to-find."

"Business really started to take off in the 50s," he said. "My grandfather was really good at publicity, and he got the Saturday Evening Post to do a whole feature story on the happy storekeeper of the Green Mountains, and as a result, tens of thousands of people got in their cars and drove up to the hills of Vermont to come and visit."

The Vermont Country Store sells a variety of products from penny candy and cheese to adult footed pajamas and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots. Gardner Orton said the products they sell are "things that you don't readily find avaialbe in other retail stores."

If the store doesn't have what consumers are looking for, the Ortons said they will go out and find it and bring it back to the customers.

"Over the years, our customers have always written to us and ask us to assist in finding it for them," Eliot said. "Tangee, which was the lipstick coined as 'the lipstick your mother would let you wear' -- we went out and found, and now we are the only store offering that."

Stores like the Vermont Country Store and Brian Florence's Web site, help people find those products of the past but try not to take the old favorites for granted. After all, they may not be there as long as you'd think.