No, not me! I have a few years yet before that happens and I’m very much looking forward to it.
If you are currently using one of these themes, don’t panic! If past history is any basis for judgement, these themes have only been made unavailable to newly created sites. Anyone who currently is using them should be able to continue to do so. Just be aware that many of these themes to do not support WordPress’ latest features and some themes, like MistyLook, have updated counterparts.
Among the 80 themes that have been retired are some of the earliest themes introduced on WordPress.com, which is now nearly 8 years old. According to the last survey Panos made in January 2012, many of these themes were among WordPress.com’s most popular.
Here’s the full list of retirees:
- Albeo
- Almost Spring
- Ambiru
- Andreas04
- Andreas09
- Annotum-base
- Annotum-sans
- Banana Smoothie
- Benevolence
- Black Letterhead
- Blix
- Blue Green
- Chaos Theory
- Chaotic Soul
- Classic
- Connections
- Contempt
- Daydream
- Depo Masthead
- Depo Square
- Digg3
- Dusk
- Duster
- Emire
- Fadtastic
- Fauna
- Fjords
- Fleur
- Flower Power
- Fresh and Clean
- Fresh Bananas
- Freshy
- Garland
- Girl
- Green Marinee
- Greenery-10
- Grid Focus
- Hemingway
- Iceburgg
- Inove
- Jentri
- K2
- Kubrick
- Light
- Mistylook
- Monotone
- Neat
- Neo Sapien-05
- Ocadia
- Ocean Mist
- Pool
- Prologue
- Quentin
- Redoable Lite
- Regulus
- Rounded
- Rubric
- Sandbox-10
- Sandbox-161
- Sandbox
- Sapphire
- Silver is the New Black
- Simpla
- Solipsus
- Springloaded
- Sunburn
- Supposedly Clean
- Sweet Blossoms
- Tarski
- The Journalist v1.3
- The Journalist
- Thirteen
- Toni
- Toolbox
- Treba
- Twenty-Eight
- Unsleepable
- Vermilion Christmas
- Vigilance
- White as Milk
We wish them a Happy Retirement!
WPcomMaven 
A haiku to remember them;
Oh Kubrick, with your plain blue header,
Off into space
2001 was years ago.
A man of many talents, but haiku? 😉
The more they do this stuff, the more I want to move to self-hosting. One day…
Honestly, I think this was a much-welcomed housekeeping move to stay up to date with the ever-changing environment here on WordPress.com and on the web in general. It would be a shame for new members to get locked in to themes that don’t have the ability to use the new features. As stated above, those already using these themes can continue to do so.
The only real surprise for me were the inclusion of the “Toolbox” and “Duster” themes, which are not that old.
(Welcome back!)
Thanks for the welcome! (It’s been nice having a break.)
I’m one of the oldie types who don’t really use most of the new features, so the new themes are wasted on me. But I take your point – plenty of people who do us them and wouldn’t be able to if they were to continue with their current themes.