[HN Gopher] Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)
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Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)
Author : JdeBP
Score : 36 points
Date : 2023-06-25 06:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wearethemutants.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wearethemutants.com)
| scrumper wrote:
| Wow, what a trip. The Russell Hobbs chrome-on-copper (number 11,
| first page of the '76 catalog) is like a wormhole to my childhood
| kitchen. I remember that red rocker switch so clearly now, how it
| felt to turn it on and off. It was beautifully spring loaded, so
| you'd push it a bit then the spring would take over and snap it
| on. My mum taught me how to make her a cup of tea when I was old
| enough to reach it - well before I liked the stuff.
| ris wrote:
| Was going to say the same thing, only ours was the stainless
| steel one (No. 10). Lasted us well into the 90s.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Amongst the upper working class, the argos catalogue featured as
| a central part of holiday (christmas esp.) life until perhaps the
| mid-2000s.
|
| You could walk into any argos and take one of the 1000pg+
| catelogues of massive pallets of them, and paw them over days.
|
| The working class, typically unsentimental in the UK, would then
| purchase the child's designated item for xmas. The pretence of
| "santa clause", i think, more often a middle class ritual.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Kind of off topic but the actual "Santa isn't real" moment for
| me was that some children _really believed it_. To us, it was
| always on the same level as the fairies (led by BDFL
| Tinkerbell, obviously) in my grandmother 's garden or the tooth
| fairy: fun to imagine but clearly, literally, make-believe and
| I thought everyone was just playing up to the same fun thought-
| experiment.
|
| And, indeed, the Argos catalogue was, for me, pored over all
| year round. In turn I discovered the multi-volume RS print
| catalogue and _real desire_ set in. Sadly Santa didn 't have a
| trade account so took a while to scam an account that permitted
| no-lower-limit free shipping.
| Graffur wrote:
| Most children do not know what a "thought-experiment" is. I
| actually feel very sorry for you and other children who never
| believed.
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| I had the same feeling about God at a Christian camp.
| WediBlino wrote:
| The laminated book of dreams.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Argos pioneered a new form of catalogue retail where customers
| made their order in one of the company's high-street shops before
| waiting for their items to be brought out from the warehouse at
| the rear._
|
| Sounds a lot like the British version of the U. S.'s Service
| Merchandise[0]. Write down your order on a little sheet of paper,
| hand it to store personnel, wait for your items to come rolling
| down the roller ramp.
|
| On an unrelated note, but from TFA:
|
| _In 1979, 42% of British citizens lived in council housing_
|
| Wait a minute, wut? Explain to this former colonist what cultural
| cue he's missing, because how is it possible that 42% of a
| country's population lives in public housing? Or is it not
| "public housing", as in U. S.-style subsidized housing? Or were
| times just that bad in Great Britain in the 70s? EDIT: thanks for
| the context, responders. Apologies if I worded it poorly.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise
| _dain_ wrote:
| _> Explain to this former colonist what cultural cue he's
| missing, because how is it possible that 42% of a country's
| population lives in public housing?_
|
| Because they criminalized private construction of housing. It
| can only be done after a lengthy procedure where you beg for
| permission from a bureaucrat.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_and_Country_Planning_Act_...
|
| _> The Act established that planning permission was required
| for land development; ownership alone no longer conferred the
| right to develop the land.[1]_
| philjohn wrote:
| Not sure it's classed as "times that bad" (although the 70's
| weren't great), but more a political decision that people of
| less means could have affordable housing.
|
| Then Thatcher allowed people to buy their council houses, and
| we are where we now are.
| jrmg wrote:
| Asking if things were 'just that bad' is a bit of a value
| judgement. Yes, they were 'just that bad', but from WWII to 70s
| the view that the government _should_ be involved in things
| like housing was a lot more prevalent in the UK than it is now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_house
| hereonout2 wrote:
| That was in 1979, the 42%, it's nothing like that now. But yes
| they are / were greatly subsidised housing. This was after a
| period of massive home building and the introduction of the
| welfare state after WW2.
|
| I don't think Britain was a shining economic example back then
| (it was known as the sick man of Europe), but council houses
| seemed rather a good thing.
|
| My mother's parents were given one in the late 50's, where they
| raised four children and my grandparents resided until there
| deaths 50+ years later. Although council housing still exists
| it's much rarer now, and your chances of recreating what my
| grandparents had are slim to none.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Not sure there is a lot of subsidy for council/housing
| association housing. Building costs paid back over 60 years
| or so generally. Perhaps land may be allocated?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| > Wait a minute, wut? Explain to this former colonist what
| cultural cue he's missing, because how is it possible that 42%
| of a country's population lives in public housing? Or is it not
| "public housing", as in U. S.-style subsidized housing? Or were
| times just that bad in Great Britain in the 70s?
|
| There were a few factors.
|
| 1. Yes, many people were very poor. Today, many Britons are
| still very poor.
|
| 2. In the war, an awful lot of housing was destroyed. Entire
| towns (Harlow and Milton Keynes are prominent examples) were
| built from open countryside to house the displaced. The
| overwhelming majority of this housing remained in government
| ownership until Thatcher's 'Right to Buy' reforms, which are
| the origin of the present housing crisis in the UK.
|
| 3. Prior to the war, the United Kingdom was the most densely
| populated country on Earth; during the war, people 'mucked in'
| to help each other during the nationwide trauma of Total
| War[0], and after the war, returning servicemen and
| servicewomen demanded that the sacrifices made amount to
| something. The governments formed by the Labour Party from 1945
| to 1980 instituted a great many social reforms - the National
| Health Service, expansion of state schooling, social care, and
| so on - that made good on these demands, and were seen as
| improvements to the nation, rather than government overreach.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war
| _dain_ wrote:
| They also introduced the Town and Country Planning Act of
| 1947, which made it illegal to build any kind of housing or
| modify existing housing without asking permission from the
| government. We would not need council housing nowadays if the
| private sector were simply allowed to fill the market demand.
| We are no longer in the days when children played in the
| rubble of cities flattened by the Luftwaffe.
|
| Blaming Thatcher is too kind to the current government.
| They're the ones who keep listening to nimbys. Thatcher's
| mistake is that _she didn 't go far enough_; axing the 1947
| Act and its descendants should have been part of the supply-
| side reforms.
|
| The fondness for council housing is an example of a peculiar
| psychological coping mechanism of Britons, stemming from
| imperial decline. We pretend a necessary evil was something
| positively desirable all along. The Americans are right, it
| is actually embarrassing to have 42% of your population in
| state-owned housing, I'm sorry to say.
| atchoo wrote:
| Please no-one pay this extreme ideological crankery any
| note.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| One counterpoint to this is Lisbon, with its unregulated
| building codes. If you've shoulder barged a doorway that's
| too narrow, looked out of a window that's one third
| obscured by a brick wall, or sat on the can and had your
| knees hit the walls, you'll know what I mean.
|
| Planning and standards aren't quite the same thing, but
| unregulated building has negative consequences on quality
| if not quantity. Does terrible Portuguese architecture go
| hand in hand with an abundance of affordable housing?
| _dain_ wrote:
| This is a common fallacy trotted out by opponents of
| planning deregulation. They conflate it with building
| codes, as if the planning laws have anything to do with
| health and safety, fire mitigation, and so on.
|
| The example we should look to is Japan. Being a country
| prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, they have rigorous
| building codes. But they have very loose planning
| restrictions. Meaning, so long as you make the building
| safe and habitable, you have a great deal of latitude to
| build what you want, _by right_ , within an urban or
| suburban area.
|
| https://twitter.com/380kmh/status/1638247647776473089
|
| https://twitter.com/AntBreach/status/1121362679367598080
|
| It is that key phrase "by right" which is lacking in the
| UK. You cannot build anything by right. This must change.
| danw1979 wrote:
| All those kettles from the 70s look realy well made. Maybe it's
| the abundant chrome.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| How unprofitable. Much better to use bits of metallised plastic
| which flake to death in a few years. Cheaper to make and those
| suckers'll be back soon enough.
|
| You can probably fix the flex properly too, new ones often have
| a moulded captive boot in the cable instead of a screw clamp.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| Last time I bought a kettle my wife did her nut because I
| went for the 20 quid option rather than spending PS80 on some
| prop from a lifestyle magazine, however I maintain that my
| reasoning was sound - all modern kit is indeed built with a
| depressingly imminent obsolescence, to which price point
| confers only limited immunity, and this is exacerbated by the
| brutal hardness of London water, which will scale and calcify
| any appliance that so much as looks at it.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Using plastic is much better, especially for the parts in
| contact with water. You wouldn't want boiling water in
| contact with metal, it might leach chemicals that would end
| up in your system
| switch007 wrote:
| Huh? Millions of cooks every day boil liquid in metal pans.
| What's the issue?
| tiernano wrote:
| on a slightly related note, Argos pulled out of the Irish market
| on 24th June 2023. I think a mix of Brexit and competition from
| Amazon and other online retailers was the final nail in the
| coffin. It could never compete on price, but did have a large
| selection of stuff...
| JdeBP wrote:
| I take the final paragraph with a huge grain of salt, having had
| an older relative who lived through it describe to me the
| _hugely_ aspirational atmosphere of the U.K. in the 1950s and
| 1960s.
|
| We cannot deduce history from the pages of one company's sales
| catalogue, merely the changing fortunes of that company; nor from
| a piece of fairy cake.
| ggm wrote:
| But, since people who lived through this time are still alive
| we have oral history and other approaches.
|
| I think this catalogue is illustrative of an ideal. And, other
| catalogues will tell a similar story.
|
| As a child of prior times I certainly recognised social coding
| in the change from old kitchen ware to new. The utility
| function of Teflon was high but the ability to signal "I can
| afford to buy new things" was also high.
|
| Tupperware was pure utility function in colours, but it failed
| to signify success. Snobs like me rather looked down on it
| (shamefully, I regret my past)
| mikestew wrote:
| _Tupperware was pure utility function in colours, but it
| failed to signify success. Snobs like me rather looked down
| on it (shamefully, I regret my past)_
|
| It is an unfortunate outcome of the sales and marketing of
| Tupperware (multi-level marketing). So the ecosystem of
| Tupperware was looked down upon, similar to Amway. And if you
| have Tupperware, then you have been to a Tupperware party.
| The upper crust, I am confident, do not attend Tupperware
| parties.
|
| But the products themselves? Awesome quality and
| functionality...at least they used to be.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Elizabeth II kept her breakfast cereal in Tupperware --
| this article probably just means commodity plastic food
| storage, but maybe HM sent out secret shoppers to
| Knightsbridge parties?:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/20/what-
| th...
| Marazan wrote:
| Argos were well ahead of the curve shopping tech wise which
| formed a large part of the reason that Sainsburys bought them.
|
| While Amazon was being pleased as punch about offering next day
| delivery on items (actual delivery time highly variable) Argos
| was offering completely reliable _same day_ delivery.
|
| It is quite amazing how smooth the process is, even if you cant
| get same day delivery you will invariably be able to get same day
| pickup. In extreme cases even if the item is not in stock locally
| if you order early enough in the day their logistics are so good
| they can move it same day to your local store for collection for
| zero extra charge.
| railton wrote:
| I get all my high end electronics through Argos as then I don't
| have to run the "is it fake" gauntlet with Amazon. Highly
| recommend.
| [deleted]
| ajb wrote:
| Argos was originally a promotional scheme called "Green Shield
| Stamps", whereby you could only buy things from them via stamps,
| which were a perk of buying other things at other retailers:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Shield_Stamps
| Lio wrote:
| Wow, these take me back.
|
| I'm particularly elated to see the good ol' Goblin Teasmade
| there. It's an alarm clock that wakes you up with a freshly made
| pot of tea. What could be more British than that?
|
| They used to have them as prizes on TV game shows. Seems
| laughable now, the idea that anyone (other than me) would get
| excited by the thought of winning a Teasmade.
| scrumper wrote:
| We never had one because my mum thought they'd burn the house
| down while we slept...
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Argos had a website put up where you could browse every one of
| their published catalogues. I think they put it up in 2020 to
| commemorate the ending of their printed catalogue.
|
| Alas, they weren't PDF or any sort of download and the website
| was discontinued shortly thereafter. Quite the shame; what I'd do
| to see the 2005 or 2007 catalogues again!
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(page generated 2023-06-26 23:01 UTC)