Cassettes and their cases had a really nice size and shape, fit right in the hand. And it was cool that you could see it moving, unlike (most) cd players. Also the recording paradigm was pretty easy to grasp, just 1:1. And they kinda degraded gracefully, with sound getting weird but still playing, at least until the tape actually came out in a big catastrophic mess and we’d try to rewind it with a pencil.
