Gypsy Creams
VG Foodstores
Woman / 17th August 1973
I thought we’d leap 8 years into the future from the last post, and wallow in VG Foodstores nostalgia. My mum was a fan of ‘Waistline’ salad cream, as she was perpetually on a diet. Check out the ’70s diet, though; chopped ham, baked beans, and not a vegetable in sight! Although convenience stores still sell a lot of this stuff, they also have pretensions towards being greengrocers, a consequence of public worries over health and the demise of the traditional greengrocer.
Tags: food, VG Foodstores, Waistline
6 Comments
Martin Fenton on 16 September 2011 @ 2pm
The sight of that packet of washing powder with the word “Biological” in the “Porridge” font has just made me all nostalgically misty-eyed for my Nan’s (deceased 1985) kitchen.
Talking of fonts, is it me or do the Maxwell House jar and the Andrex wrapping use the same one?
Tanya Jones on 16 September 2011 @ 6pm
I remember that packet being in my nan’s kitchen too, Martin! As for the baked bean restriction, it was common to see offers in Makro Mail (John would help compile it when he worked there) which weren’t applicable to certain areas, so I presume this was a franchise issue in Scotland, for whatever reason.
Rob Williams on 17 September 2011 @ 9pm
I suddenly fancy some Maxwell House coffee with a VG Digestive…
Charlie Albright on 4 October 2011 @ 9pm
Do I remember the class wars that went on with washing powder? or was it just a dream ?
I seem to remember that Daz and Bold were regarded as a bit chavvy, Tide sort of upper working class and Fairy was sort of conservative middle class who were likely to watch and appear on the BBC in shows like ‘ask the family’- infact you could smell them- drab clothes with that distinctive Fairy smell. Persil was for the more the laid back middle class family,probably taking a bite out of the Harold Wilson speech ‘the white heat of technology’ their adverts were usually set in a very modern house with young actors (probably Jonathan Ross with the help of his pushy Mum? ) prancing about in their very white underwear getting ready to go somewhere important.
…Then biological powders came along and broke the class barriers, Ariel had a sort of graphic of an atom on the front (IIRC) this combined with the word ‘biological’ gave some people the heebeejeebees in the post Cuban missile crisis.. To cap it all the rival Lever Brothers brought out a biological
powder called ‘ Radiant ‘ which could be associated with ‘radium’ or ‘radiation’. In fact clothes washed in this did glow nicely but fell to pieces (the powder was withdrawn later) making some people suspicious that they had got the formula out of Marie Curie’s notebook.
Mike on 9 January 2012 @ 10pm
Love this, i have recently dug an old tip an found a VG plastic bag with a heart on an the VG logo. I saved part of the bag as the rest was rotten with rust as tins were inside, I have also seen the Suncrush screw caps from the orange squash, they were metalic silver colour with Suncrush written on them. Seen a few of those Maxwell House jars to. VG also had there own drand coffee to, its pictured in my 1960s Robert Opie book. i also have a light bulb from VG an a yellow pin badge to.
Mark Thompson on 16 September 2011 @ 9am
Scotland don’t even get the beans apparently! Jelly and ham all the way for them…