I have become mildly obsessed by the retail collages outside convenience shops. Reminders that you might want to pop inside and grab some lunch, replenish your larder or stuff your face. Where do these vinyls come from, is there a stock provider and how do they decide what products to include?
This first graphic is from Sanny's Mini Market Premier Express in New Barn Street, Plaistow E13.
The packs of sandwiches are intriguing because two are Tesco Light Choices Ham & Cheese and the other is a Co-Op Classic Chicken. It might be possible to buy one of these inside the Mini Market but certainly not both. A little online digging confirms that the Ham and Cheese Sandwich is an Alamy stock image (ID: C4WKCF), which is starting to suggest that some kind of cottage industry exists for the purpose of knocking out semi-amateur grocery graphics.
Beneath the giant Hovis loaf is a brown paper bag overflowing with implausibly stacked items. Slices of unwrapped bacon. The top of a foil-wrapped bottle. Maybe digestives. Possibly a cucumber. A glimpse of a peach. A big pack of aspirational chocolate biscuits from a brand that only lowly independent shops dare to stock. A red pepper that's definitely clipart rather than a genuine photograph. It's just as well nobody ever looks at this stuff too closely.
Finally come the fresh groceries, which inexplicably include sticks of celery propped up against an expensive bottle of olive oil. Four tins are shown, but with their labels missing so shoppers would have to guess what might be inside. Two dozen eggs have been piled up in a bowl and overtopped by a pair of levitating red peppers. To complete the tableau is a huge bottle of Cravendale milk. Absolutely no expert Photoshopping abilities have been used to create this image, should any of you be in need of a new career.
My apologies, I appear to be over-analysing the groceries pictured in a corner shop window on a Plaistow sidestreet.
This is even less an attempt at recreating reality and far more an identity parade of brightly-coloured packaging. Blue backgrounds appear to be the default option, by the way.
Tubs: Dromona Pure Butter, Fage Greek Yoghurt, Whole Earth Peanut Butter Packets: Cricketer Farm Vintage Cheddar, Brown Bag smoked bacon crisps, Altintop salty crisp sunflower seeds, Walkers ready salted, Ruffles cheddar and sour cream, Cheetos crunchy, Pringles BBQ, Jimmy Dean premium regular sausage Bottles: Heinz Mayonnaise, Countrylife milk, Nutri-Boost, Horlicks Tins: Whole Butter Cookies, Heinz Beans, Princes tuna steak, Princes stewing steak, Marmarabirlik Turkish olives, Visciano Polpa a cubetti chopped tomatoes Boxes: Tetley Cherry Bakewell green tea, Brooke Bond Taj Mahal, Brooke Bond Red Label, Typhoo (obscured), Tata Tea Chakra Gold, Nescafe Classic, Nescafe Sunrise, Lavazza Espresso, 8 Mini Nogger Sandwich ice creams, one Cornetto Classico Vanilla, four Almond Magnums Toiletries: Pears soap, Lifebuoy soap, Lux soap, Dove soap, Cinthol soap, Breeze tissues, Pepsodent toothpaste, Colgate Maxfresh, Navratina hair oil, Comfort fabric conditioner, Surf Excel
Sorry, I didn't go out last night, as you can probably tell.
Let's head north to the Caner Supermarket in Odessa Road, Forest Gate. That is a very unusual name for a corner shop, by the way, but I suspect the local catchment area approves.
The big panels to the left feature beer, wine, fruit and vegetables, but it's the giant bottle of Jack Daniels that really stands out. Heading home? Why not nip inside for a bottle of something expensively alcoholic, you know you want to. The Corn Flakes have been presented in a bowl on a serving plate, which seems somewhat excessive for a breakfast staple. Some kind of fizzy tsunami is sweeping across the bottom half of the panel, carrying cans of both Pepsi and Coca-Cola with it, but it doesn't seem to have dampened the selection of periodicals... which are fantastically out of date.
This particular edition of the Evening Standard has a headline about Tony Blair and costs 20p, which means it must be from sometime before 2009 when the paper embarked on free distribution. Gordon Brown grins from the front of the Daily Telegraph, which suggests a similar vintage. But it's the copy of What's on TV magazine that finally gives the game away, with Charlie Stubbs' Corrie baby shocker and Pauline Fowler's criminal love interest dating this window display firmly from February 2006. They don't print 'em like this any more.
Finally this is from the side of the kiosk at the junction of Church Street and New Plaistow Road in West Ham. The shutters came down on this retail outlet a while back.
Large panels for the National Lottery and Oyster wouldn't be the top promotional priority of any shopkeeper today, but the early 21st century was a different world. Those also look like obsolete logos on the cans of Fanta Orange and Sprite. That bag of Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles is somehow reassuringly retro. McVities no longer manufacture Mini Milk Choc Hobnobs in a 125g 'Tear & Share' packet, and Tangy Cheese Doritos are not sold in 180g bags.
But again it's the newspapers that offer the biggest clue to when this particular signage was manufactured. The Guardian hasn't yet shrunk in size, Michael Jackson is still alive and the Daily Express is still obsessed with migrant controls (not that the last of these helps much, sorry). As for the Birmingham Post, that's a really strange choice of local newspaper for a kiosk in the heart of the East End, but this is what you get when you purchase generic signage. And its headline about a plane crash in Coventry places this particular signage definitively in the summer of 2008, like a throwback from a oddly distant era.
Anyway, this is the current extent of my grocery vinyl obsession. I suspect there's a full-on photographyexhibition in it somewhere, one day.
I have become mildly obsessed by the retail collages outside convenience shops. Reminders that you might want to pop inside and grab some lunch, replenish your larder or stuff your face. Where do these vinyls come from, is there a stock provider and how do they decide what products to include?
