Always the alert trend spotter, Madonna was on to something when she named her new company Semtex Girls, after the Czech brand of plastic explosive invented here in the 1950s.

Traditional Czech brands, many of which date back to the dawn of the communist era or earlier, seem to be all the rage these days, especially among nostalgic locals who are 30 or older and remember them from their childhood.

From the Coca-Cola–inspired Kofola soft drink, to Botas sneakers, to Prim watches, to Jawa motorcycles, items that all but disappeared from the market in the 1990s following the Velvet Revolution are making a comeback. To a large degree, increasing consumer demand seems to be driving this trend.

"There's a lot of Czechs out there now who specifically look for Czech products when they're shopping," says Pavel Šimoník, who researches marketing and consumer behavior at the Stem/Mark agency.

Why now?

Analysts say the society has matured and no longer equates domestic products with shoddy quality or negative associations with growing up in communist Czechoslovakia.

"People are saturated with foreign brands," says Šimoník. "Western products no longer have the exclusive image they once had."

Under the communist regime, hard-to-obtain Western brands had an almost sacrosanct status. People worshipped at the altar of Tuzex, the only chain of local stores where foreign goods were stocked, paying exorbitant amounts of money for American chewing gum, West German shampoo or Levi's jeans.

"People were hungry for foreign brands," says Martin Klofanda, spokesman for Kofola. When those foreign brands suddenly became readily available after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Czech products fell by the wayside.

Who needed Kofola when you could have the real thing in the form of Coca-Cola or Pepsi? "The early '90s were the worst time for Kofola. It was a critical time."

Other domestic brands also fell on hard times.

"I don't even want to remember the early '90s," says Pavel Smažil of Alpa, a company that creates the traditional rubbing alcohol called francovka as well as other cosmetic products. "We just couldn't compete with the Western products coming on the market."

But things have changed in the past five years. Now that the market is saturated with global brands, it's Czech ones that suddenly seem exotic.

"People are starting to realize that a lot of Czech products made under the previous regime were actually good-quality," says Pavel Brída, the owner of Motoscoot, a motorcycle manufacturer that this year reintroduced the famous Czech-designed Pionýr 555 motorcycle.

"A lot of people are becoming nostalgic for these products that they grew up with," says Brída. "What Czech guy didn't ride a Pionýr at least once when he was young?"

Even the younger generation that doesn't necessarily remember these products has an affinity for them, seemingly inherited from their parents.

"A lot of people buy Alpa francovka because it's what they know," Smažil says. "But there are people who know it because maybe their grandmother used to keep it in the bathroom. It's a tradition."

It's more than just nostalgia, though, says Klofanda.

"There are people who will buy Kofola largely because it's Czech," he claims. "People are suddenly proud again of these famous brands."

Reaching for their wallets

They're putting their money where their heart is. Kofola has seen a fivefold increase in its sales in the past few years, jumping from around 460 million Kč ($21.1 million) in revenue in 1999 to over 2 billion Kč in 2004.

Now you'll find fashion-conscious Czechs trading in their Rolexes for a Prim, mothers buying their toddlers the traditional dairy snack Pribináček as opposed to Western-style treats, or patriotic hipsters ditching their retro-style Asics for a pair of Czech-made Botasky.

Manufacturers are responding to this demand by bringing back some of the products that disappeared decades ago. Botas now makes retro-style sneakers that middle-aged Czechs will remember from their high-school gym class. And he watchmaker Prim has also reintroduced a series of old-school models based on popular demand.

"The desire for retro products is something you see all over the world," says Brída. "Just look at how popular '60s-style Vespa scooters are. The trend has caught on here as well."

For Czechs, consumer culture has always been intertwined with politics, of course, and the reconciliation with traditional brands can thus take on emotional dimensions.

Brída says he was surprised by the reactions he got when his company first introduced the revived Pionýr motorcycle at a trade fair this spring.