Originally Posted by
madpogue
Your reference was to how new bikes are spec'ed which is irrelevant. There are scads of parts you'd never see on a new bike, but still readily available for C&V. New bikes haven't had thumbies for decades, yet they're still making new ones. Why should tires be any different? If anything, tires should be among the MOST likely things to be supported decades into the future, given that they're much more of a consumable than, say, a shifter.
The difference between thumbies and 27" tires is that it is the size that is obsolete, not any style or technology used in tires.
Anyhow, thumb shifters very much did go away for a long time. You could get ultra-cheapo friction style, and Paul's Components made expensive adapters to use bar end shifters. But indexed thumb shifters were gone from the market for quite a while. I only know of a limitd number of Suntour examples that survived past the era of 7 speed. Used Shimano thumb shifters only stayed in demand because there is a 'Phantom Click' so they could be adapted to work with 8 speed drivetrains.
Maybe 27" wheels will come back into style and there will be more options for tires, but I kind of doubt it because of the advantages and popularity of switching to 700c wheels, and the fact that many of the surviving fleet of 27" wheel bikes are department store junk.