Thursday 27 April 2017

1988: MIDLAND BANK GRIFFIN SAVERS ACCOUNT

From the summer of 1984: the ubiquitous MIDLAND BANK sign-up-the-kids-and-we'll-have-em-for-life GRIFFIN SAVERS 'starter kit', as advertised in the pages of EAGLE.

This has a huge nostalgia quotant:
- A long-gone from the High Street brand name.
- A cunning way of making a staid-and-stuffy brand identity look more - ahem - human.
- An ace marketing slogan that's outlived the bank itself in the public conscious. Beat that HSBC UK!
- A school bag that everyone seemed to have... especially if you had parents who saw the value in savings AND saving money. As the term went on, sightings would become rarer as the good-but-not-great quality succumbed to daily wear-and-tear.
- A dictionary which was likely to be defaced on the first day of term... and almost certainly didn't have any rude words in (the ones that did were always deemed to be THE BEST dictionary).
- A stationery set once again pitched at the price-sensitive parent.  With a compass ideal for unexpected attacks on classmates during a dull GCSE English Lit. class.  How many people have actually ever used one - for anything - since they left school?  Except - maybe - for pipe fitters and circular hole makers.  It's bonkers to think that this was a time before Poundland and free stationery kits as comics freebies when such a set would actually represent a considerable start-of-term investment.
- A folder.  Because everyone knows that a folder is a great starting point for any project.


3 comments:

  1. Now you're really taking me back - kids today don't know what they're missing out on! When I started work in 97 one of my colleagues still had the dictionary in her desk drawer and she still used it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've not yet found INFINITY in the shops but according to this page, its actually a successor to an earlier mag :



    http://infinitymagazine.co.uk/welcome-to-sci-fi-heaven/




    which you previously covered here :



    http://starlogged.blogspot.ie/2014/11/1996-infinity-magazine-issue-1.html





    http://starlogged.blogspot.ie/2014/11/1996-infinity-magazine-issue-1.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yup. I picked up a copy last weekend and the editorial also talks about the previous version. I did wonder how they had ended up with the same name. I spotted copies in WHS yesterday so it looks like they have got a good distribution deal. The magazine itself is OK... there is an obvious (especially to anyone who knows anything about SF TV) on the caption of THE HIGHWAYMAN pic but hopefully the rest of it is better put together.

    The new issue of GEEKY MONKEY - which, to a certain extent, also occupies the same slightly-vintage genre territotory - has a cracking cover to warm yer cockles this month.

    ReplyDelete

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