Back-to-school shopping means another round of innovations in the school-supply aisle. While it's fun to find new and better ways to store stuff and take notes, all that shopping made us remember the simpler shopping days of yesteryear.

So for a nostalgic tour of the school-supply aisle, we present a retro-vs.-new school smackdown! If you haven't checked off every product on your shopping list yet, read on for a few tips:

* Then: Getting colds.

Now: Hand sanitizer. A modern school-supply list includes about a gallon of hand sanitizer per child. While we could make some jokes about what wimps these little emperors have become, the thought of a class riddled with pinkeye sways us the other way.

Winner: Purell.

* Then: Carrying your stuff.

Now: Backpacks. There was a day, kids, when we simply carried a few books and a notebook home in our arms instead of packing luggage for school.

Around the mid to late '80s, backpacks started becoming a fashion accessory, with a sleek L.L. Bean bag embroidered with your initials announcing your arrival. Schools started removing lockers for space or security purposes. Chiropractors did a happy dance for the future windfall of customers.

Winner: Backpacks, by a slight, hobbled margin.

* Then: Chalkboard.

Now: Dry-erase board. Though teachers and allergy sufferers welcomed the advent of dry-erase boards, there's something missing in classrooms these days. Nobody gets "rewarded" at the end of the day with the privilege of washing the board and smacking the chalk off the erasers. The white boards are clean, cold and efficient, something our school days rarely were.

Winner: Nostalgia by a nose, since we like school to be slightly different from a brainstorming session in the marketing department.

* Then: Passing notes.

Now: Texting your friends. Sure, you could lose your phone if you are caught texting under the desk, but there's a certain art to waiting for just the right moment when the teacher's back is turned to hurl a paper football at your BFF, asking her to check the box next to the New Kid she will marry.

Winner: 4get txt, passing notes is livin' on the edge.

* Then: Trapper Keeper.

Now: Thumb drive. Sure, those portable data storage doohickeys hanging on lanyards can hold a huge amount of information with no power supply. But the Trapper Keeper didn't need a power supply, either.

Winner: Trapper Keeper - because you can't find the cast of Dawson's Creek on the cover of a thumb drive.

* Then: Bic 4-Color Ballpoint.

Now: Sharpie pen. Sharpie came out with a new everyday pen this year, even getting David Beckham to sign autographs with it. Back in the day, our class notes were accented with that fat pen with the four different colors just a click away. It's red! No, it's blue! Wait for it . . . green! But the clicking action sometimes stuck and it's hard to read green, so you stuck with good ol' blue. We took the new Sharpie for a test drive, and the result was a very solid, sharp line in black, though the blue was a bit too light in color for our taste.

Winner: Sharpie. We'd follow David Beckham around with one of those.