The joy of undertaking any work at Sennicotts is you never know what you will find.
This week while decorating a bedroom we discovered a builder in the 1960’s had been fuelled by Crosse & Blackwell Meat Soup (Beef). Only he hadn’t just enjoyed the contents but had instead carefully placed the empty tin under an old light shade and built this little time capsule into the base of a cupboard.
Nice to think he thought his workmanship would last long enough for his capsule to be of interest. This one survived over 50 years. Something tells me today’s builders of new homes finished with acres of cheap plastics don’t have quite as much hope in the future of their creations.
A little marketing note aside: Even though I find myself staring at an empty and rusty tin the ‘Ten O’Clock Tested’ logo remains reassuring and inviting. This very successful marketing campaign of the 1950’s and 60’s gave the consumer the guarantee that the product lines they were enjoying had been extensively taste tested at 10 o’clock as part of a daily routine. I find this reassuring to know that Crosse & Blackwell called quite a large number of staff in each morning to join the daily taste test.
That the product was good enough for its staff to consume each morning is somehow a lot more convincing than the image I have of a food plant of today bringing me my tinned soup coldly stared at by a load of computer probes.