‘The world’s smallest umbrella just got smaller!’ proclaimed the headline in the catalogue.
I read this with excitement back in the late 1980s, when every newspaper seemed to have at least one catalogue of unlikely items inserted among its pages. Why anyone would want to buy a tiny umbrella was puzzling, but it was written in a captivating manner.
Like many readers, I found myself lured into reading these catalogues, and even held a sneaking admiration for the copywriters who promoted so many bizarre items.
They loved to pose questions that were never answered, implying an impossible level of research. ‘Is this the world’s most versatile, folding, lightweight wheelbarrow?’ blazed the headline in one edition. I rang up the catalogue company to ask what else it did, to the bafflement of the employee.
Anthropomorphic qualities were applied to inanimate objects: ‘The high-performance trainer that thinks it’s a sandal’!
I bought ludicrous items from these catalogues as presents for bemused friends. My favourite was the salt-and- pepper set in the shape of a butler (pepper) and maid (salt). The butler sneezed when shaken while the maid replied, ‘Bress you,’ as you poured your salt. They were made in China.
Another obsession of the catalogue writers was storage. Everyone apparently had storage problems, and they were there to offer a plethora of ‘solutions’.
One bold question asked, ‘How would you like to double your under-sink storage space?’ This, it turned out, on further reading, was an advert for a shelf. When all else failed, the copywriters would add preposterous qualities to things that hardly seemed relevant: a tray table that ‘also works at night’.
I blame my love of these catalogues for leading me to buy other things wiser men would have shunned. After travelling through Dubai Airport one year, I came home with a brown plastic donkey which ‘emits cigarettes from rear’. You pulled its ears back and a cigarette loaded in its belly would then protrude from its bottom. I gave it to my business partner, Tim Bell, a heavy smoker. I’m pleased to say it sat on his desk for the next ten years.
One strange gizmo always fascinated me: the Corby Trouser Press, once popular in private homes and three- and four-star hotel rooms. It was not invented in Corby, but named for its inventor, Peter Corby, who had joined his family’s valet-stand company in 1951. During a chance encounter with an engineer who was developing an electrical heating system for the nose cone of Concorde, it struck Mr Corby that he could adapt the technology. The legendary Corby Trouser Press was born – an instant worldwide success.
You can still buy crazy things online: laser-powered pizza scissors, air-conditioned shoes, Bluetooth toasters and electronic nail files.
But the descriptions today are matter-of-fact and not nearly as alluring as the ones in the old catalogues.
On Sunday mornings, when there was a deluge of catalogues inside the newspapers, I used to telephone a like-minded friend to discuss the best finds that week. We’d often buy each other gifts: the welcome mat that said ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ when you trod on it; the vacuum-cleaner cover shaped like a caricature granny.
My long-suffering wife drew the line when a set of particularly hideous talking garden gnomes (‘Ideal to warn off intruders’) arrived one afternoon. Sadly, they were doomed to instant disposal. Supermarkets and other retailers love the concept of the impulse purchase. They encourage it by placing stuff you really don’t need in key places inside their shops to tempt you. Special offers, bargains, two for the price of one ... these are all techniques used to shift slow-selling stock.
But they don’t have the creativity of the ad-writers for those once ubiquitous catalogues.
I was, perhaps, a little obsessive, yet I defy any Oldie-reader to claim he or she has never succumbed to their allure. Somewhere in a cupboard there will lurk a product of considerable age that has never been used or consumed; why was it bought in the first place?
When clearing out my late mother’s house after her death in the ’90s we found two curiosities nearly worthy of an appearance on Antiques Roadshow. One was a box of chocolate cup-cake cases with 1961 on the packaging, the other a tin (by then bulging precariously) of Kraft cheese slices with a ration ticket attached.
I wonder what possessed her to keep them ... but then I shall never know what the promotional material promised.
Piers Pottinger is a public-affairs consultant
