The history of British packaging and brands including Oxo, Fry's, Perrier, MacKintosh's and many others will be discovered in a new Museum dedicated to mass-consumerism.
Robert Opie, is a well-known author of many books about British consumerism. He is also a passionate collector of items relating to that same history and nostalgia.
Opie’s collection is so vast that it forms the basis for one of London’s newest museums, the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, in London’s Notting Hill District. Suite 101 met with Robert Opie who personally runs the Museum.
Collecting runs in the family. Opie’s father collected books about children’s life, a collection now at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. “It was the best collection of children’s books in private hands so that was the kind of atmosphere I grew up in.
“My parents were also writers of children’s literature. They wrote things like the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, and a number of books on nursery rhymes and street games and the language of school children and things like that.”
A Life-long Passion
As a boy Opie collected coins, stones and stamps and all the things that children do collect but he wanted to find something different. “I started to collect contemporary packaging when I was still at school.
“The first item was a “Munchies” wrapper (a confectionery still popular now) but I soon realised that you could find earlier things. From that moment onwards I was trying to track the whole story from beginning to end of everything relating to the consumer revolution. That’s what I have essentially spent the last 35 years doing.”
Opie’s teenage hobby has become a life-long passion. “There are so many different parts that it’s like having five hundred different collections, all connected and joined together.”
A Million-piece Jigsaw
“I don’t see them as individual collections - they are one entity. So, it’s like putting a jigsaw together. There are potentially a million items in this jigsaw and I’ve got half. It’s selecting the items that fit together so the museum is laid so that every part connects to the next part. It’s only when you get enough pieces together that you can actually see the whole picture.”
Favourite Items
When people ask Opie about his favourite year or favourite item he tells them “I have thousands of favourite items, like the MacKintosh's Milky Bar Kid, or the Perrier Adverts. The favourite item can often be the latest item that I’ve got that fits into that jigsaw and shows that part of the story. You know when you’re doing a jigsaw you got that block, and that block, and when you find the bit that connects those two blocks together you have bit of a wow, that’s come together nicely. It’s very much like that but on a massive scale.”
Rare Items – the Oxo Packet
Opie is always looking for rare items. “There are thousands of rare items. How do you qualify rarity? Take Oxo tins, for example. People save tins, they are useful items. But to find an Oxo packet is much more difficult because nobody saves packets.”
Women in Society
Through the medium of packaging and advertising, such as Suffragette Posters and Perrier Adverts the museum also explores the changing place of women in society.
Future Plans
Although the museum currently displays items from the Victorian era onwards Opie’s collection goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Romans. “They had pots and containers, toys and so on. I have a collection from that era because it shows that consumer products as we know them today have been around for a very long time.
One day they will go on display as well. At the moment I’m just telling the recent story. Some of these stories do go back further than one thinks.”
Opie’s wish list for the museum includes a can of wartime Spam: “Someone will have one at the back of a cupboard somewhere. Perhaps they’ll send it to me.”
A final word:
"Some may consider so much apparent trivia to be so much rubbish but it is amongst the fragments of daily living that we are psychologically and socially rooted, and this is where the impulses of our society can be found."
