Things I liked at Christmas
I liked Salcombe & the Devon Coast - See posts belowI liked the The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, London, W11 - This museum has 10-15,000 diffent items of consumer products since the 1850s, arranged chronologically by decade and also separately it traces the evolution of some of the best-known packaging (such as Cadbury's chocolate, Oxo, Fairy Liquid, etc). Fascinating stuff if you like that sort of thing, which I do.
Whilst on the subject of olden-days, when looking through some old newspapers recently I was struck by how much modern and prosperous the mid-1930s ones looked than the early 1950s one, both in their design and what was in their advertising. Wars, eh? [Update: Thinking some more, I think there are two factors here. One is paper rationing, which I think remained in force for a long time, and two, the readership of the Daily Express (for that was the paper I was looking at) was doing very well by 1936, with the first consumer boom (when people in the late 1940s looked back at the 1930s it appears 'shopping' was one of the main things they remembered most fondly), and weren't doing so well in 1952. Indeed although British GDP never suffered a major fall fro WWII unlike continental European countries, I wonder when personal consumption reached its late 1930s level again?)
I liked the X-Box 360: Ok, it's not a great evolution, with the best games looking like a very high-end PC with a bit more oomph. But a very high-end PC with a bit more oomph costs about £1500, and the X-Box doesn't. Also most people don't have it connected up to a 48 inch TV, and my friend did. So highly enjoyable, though I'm not sure what it does for your electricity bills as the thing is very loud.
I think I liked Billecart-Salmon champagne: A man who should know assures me that the Brut version (top in the link) is by far the best standard price champagne you can buy, and I agree it was rather nice. Alas I had drunk about four pints of boxed cider beforehand, so I can't be sure.
I really liked Kodak Photo Printers - Wow, these things are amazing. Put your camera on top (or plug the cable in if it's not the same make), press one button, and a proper photo comes out after about 40 seconds. It's really remarkable. It does four passes, how does it keep each colour aligned? How's it so shiny? etc
posted by Matthew @ 1/02/2006 05:15:00 PM
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