Well yes of course there are many things better than that, but the
above happened to me in the Robert Opie’s Museum of Brands. Packaging and
Advertising, in Notting Hill in London.
The article in question was a tin that had formerly held Huntley and Palmers (note the absence of an apostrophe)
Cocktail Assorted Biscuits. Here is my
own "museum quality" tin:
As you see the great thing about it is that the tin shows a tin that
shows a tin that shows a tin, and so on, ad infinitum. I like that kind of thing.
Much of the Opie Museum is a big blast of nostalgia. You get to see all the cans and packets and
wrappers that you knew as a kid, all the chocolate bars and breakfast cereal and
fizzy drinks, all the way up to a Watneys Party Seven (note the absence of an apostrophe). And you observe how some designs have changed
completely and some hardly at all.
And then there’s stuff you can’t quite believe – Tony the Tiger, for
instance, now a lovable feline with a neckerchief was once considered a wild
animal and had a big “dog” collar round his neck.
Now, we know the past is another country, but even so,
I was surprised just how much cocktail-related stuff there apparently was in
the English past. Even Twiglets seem to
have been sold as a “cocktail snack”.
True, my dodgy aunt and uncle who drove around in a yellow and black
Ford Zodiac did have a cocktail cabinet with a light inside that lit up when
you opened the front – hours of amusement there for a small pesky child. But I don’t recall them mixing any
cocktail. The cabinet was much like
this one:
And of course there’s some stuff you remember that isn’t there, and a
lot of stuff that’s there that you don’t remember at all, and then there’s the
stuff you find fairly hard to believe. I
mean it doesn’t seem so surprising that Heinz made Mock Turtle Soup. But Real
Turtle soup? Where’s there time
machine when you need one?
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