The Igloo cooler is back. If you know, you know.

There is a very specific aesthetic that the 1990s got right: if it is functional, make it look like it was built for a holiday weekend and nothing else. The marbled red-and-white Igloo cooler is this aesthetic made into a physical object.

It has been sitting in the back of garages since approximately 1997. Someone at Igloo, at some point, looked at it and thought: right. Let us make that again.

They are selling out.

The retro Playmate cooler, the boxy one with the handle, the one your dad had, and the Laguna, the bigger pull-along version with the wheels, both come in the original colorways now: red and white marbled, hunter green, cream. They look like they belong at a county fair or next to a card table where someone is about to play dominoes in a driveway. This is not a criticism.

What makes them worth actually buying, beyond the nostalgia, is that they are the same cooler they have always been. Not redesigned. Not updated with a rubber gasket system and a proprietary drain plug. The same foam-insulated, lightweight, easy-to-clean cooler that kept the sandwiches cold on approximately every road trip from 1985 to 2002. It does the job. It looks like itself. It does not need to be carried in a tote.

The person at the party with the vintage Igloo is the same person who has been there before. That signal is either appealing to you or it is not.

I have been looking at the cream and red one for three weeks. This is a warning.