Battra92

Oddly enough the magazines and stuff are touting gray as the new "in" color. I know contractors love to paint everything beige (that's what my landlord painted our apartment) but that's apparently out now too. It just makes me wonder why trends happen and what makes something stylish one year and ugly the next and then cool ten years later ...

I think it's ubiquity mostly. It applies to everything from clothes to music to video games. A "new" (but probably old) thing appears. One or two people have it. It's seen as weird, then niche, then cult, then popular, mainstream, tired, old, unfashionable, dead, then it becomes new again. You could probably fit it into a bell curve of popularity over time if you had the data, time and inclination.

tl;dr People are fickle sheep.

I wouldn't call people sheep. I think a big part of retro is people want to buy back their childhoods. I mean, it's one reason the N64 is the console du jour at the moment. Because the kids who played it as their first console are now in college (God, that's scary as I was of the NES generation ...)