As a Brit, nothing defines me like a slice of cold, crispy, thickly buttered toast, eaten with a cold hard boiled egg! ... That's part of my breakfast every day! 👍😋
People should take into account that people's wages in the 1970s were generally lower than they are today. Even though the prices look cheap by today's standards, people can buy food more cheaply today than 30 years ago. Today we also have supermarkets' own value brands which are heavily discounted. There were very few of these in the 70s: it was mainly branded items and the few cheaper 'own brands' available tasted rank!
£1 in 1977 was like spending £5.57 as of July 2023. That is according to Bank of England website. A 6 pack of Penguin which was 19.5p back then would now cost 5.57x0.195 which makes approx £1.09. Tesco are flogging a seven pack for £1.50 now, so at least as far as a choccy biccie for your elevensies goes, you’d be better off warping back to 1977. The same goes for a single tin of Heinz beans, price has doubled from equivalent of 70p to £1.40.
We don't realise how well off we are now. So 30 years ago those items were about 25% of what they are now but wages were only about 10% of today. Thanks for putting the video up.
Absolutely. The prices here look cheap to modern eyes, but that's not taking into account how very expensive they were to the average person back then.
Yep, but I haven't seen any. Everything's gone up :( I liked the voice-over on this advert. He wasn't like the voices you hear today - usually screechy, immature women that try to feign a sense of friendliness by smiling when talking.
What some of the earlier comments seem to forget, is that although the prices look cheap compared to today, back in 1977 wages were hell of alot lower than nowadays, Tesco were still ripping people off back then as they do today.
@@zeddeka A can of evaporated milk is only 59p in Aldi today. (But £1.65 on Ocado) Cheap own brand butter is about £2. (I hate cheap butter hence I buy Président or Lurpak) The Heinz baked bean cans are about 75p each on multibuy, although they've gotten slightly smaller (they are 415g now - which is I think about 1 ounce less than the can from 1977). Those Tesco "low-calorie drinks" looked horrible and were probably full of E-numbers and rubbish. I only buy French orange or grapefruit juice and mineral water. What strikes me more than anything is just how drab and dreary the products were. No tenderstem broccoli, avocados or vine tomatoes. Everything looked cheap, although compared to wages then I guess they probably weren't so cheap. I would love to be able to step back in time and pop into Tesco and see the offers and weird retro products and designs.
mikem1966 | Because the Half Penny coin that worth Half Pence / Half P / ½p is still in circulation, and remained in use until 1984. That way the United Kingdom still have the ability to the divide the Pound Sterling into 200 pieces, like the old 240 pieces in the old £sd system (or 480 pieces using Half Penny, or 960 pieces using Farthing). Unlike today where they're limited to only 100 pieces. The UK economy probably would have improved more if they used an accounting only units, such as a Mil (aka tenth Centh) or even a hundrenth of a Cent. It allowed Customers to have a simpler currency, but still allow merchants to have a much more flexible price. Like for example, the Indonesian Rupiah (IDR). The lowest Coin Denomination is 100 Rupiah. But they still used 1~99 Rupiah in pricing. The amount paid is rounded to the nearest hundred, unless you pay using electronic transfer.
Anyone recognise the voice over..??? It's Del Boys father in law James (Raquels Dad) the one who finds The Pocket watch in the garage which makes them Millionaires
??? Do you understand inflation? Multiply the prices by about 8.41 to get the equivalent in 2023 money. None of the prices there are what you'd call cheap. I don't think anyone in their right mind would ever say food was better in the UK in the 1970s......
Comparatively speakinh things are actually cheaper now than they were then. For example, using the BOE inflation calculator for 1977 the 6 pack of penguins at 19.5p should cost £1.15 now. In the convenience store next door to me a 6 pack of penguins is currently £1.00
Ahhh yes Tesco's in the 70's...I can still smell it. and It smelt dirty! It was only in the eary 80's that they started to up their game and began to compete with Sainsbury's, CO-OP, Liptons and Fine Fare. Didn't they do well?
Psychological. A bit like the 99p thing nowadays. People see the larger number to the left of the ½p and take that as the true cost. Adding the ½p on that ski was effectively a 14% price hike.
Kids today! 1/2p was an actual coin that was used then. They were smaller than a 1p coin, were were withdrawn from circulation sometime in the early 80's.
Lol, of course the funny thing is that by 1977, with Jack Cohen's low margins strategy, Tesco was in serious trouble, and analysts recommended changing the name as part of taking the stores upmarket. Hard to believe today!
Many of those brands have disappeared now! Ski yoghurt, Chivers jam, and Quosh! I often wonder whatever happened to-- no not The Likely Lads, PanYan pickle!? I was very partial to PanYan pickle on my cheese sandwiches.
I have been wide awake this evening with far too little to do, and I have just multiplied these prices by £5.57, which the Bank of England says is the July 2023 equivalent to one 1977 pound. I then compared them with what Tesco is flogging today, and food prices have more or less doubled since 1977. Heinz beans being an obvious culprit, working out at the modern equivalent of 70p per single tin - £1.40 nowadays. But yes, you can still get Stork and it’s double the price for a similar quantity. Jacobs Crackers are sold in 300g now, as opposed to 200g, but they’re still £1.70 a pack, and 64p for 200g in 77. Add an extra 100g and it works out at about 95p. So we’re being fleeced. The food industry, with all its flying products half way round the world and back, underpaying farmers in third world countries etc… are ruining the planet, and they are the only ones who stand to benefit. Tesco shareholder dividends tripled in the tax year 21-22, Sainsbury’s doubled in the same period. They can afford to do more to ease the burden than they’re doing.
Hi Dave - your assessment is so right - money has been bleached from just about everywhere now, but not so much from supermarkets (they are on high exposure for all to see) but the more hidden sharks of limitless greed in that parasite institution, the city. That place only exists for its own goals of getting rich itself on the backs of the real earners. Viz: a company does well - its shares rise in value, some stockbroker jerk in the middle gets a fat bonus for simply flogging those shares on.
fantastic! They loved the 1/2p prices alright. it just gave the checkout girl (they were always girls) an extra button to click with her right hand. Yes, they never used barcodes back then. everything was manually added at the till
@SteveFusionX I can well believe it. Tescos in Hastings has just opened a superstore and are going to ship in workers from europe and provide them with housing etc. While locals that work there are being given less and less hours. Someone told me they only recognise one bank holiday at christmas and you don`t get paid any extra to work over bank holidays.
Thanks for the reminder but there really was no need as i am fully aware of what the 19 1/2p mentioned in the advert is worth in today's money. My comment was nothing to do with the prices and everything to do with the actual value hence my original comment.
No problem at all. I probably should have explained it better but what i meant was that at time of the advert Tesco were one of the higher discounters of food but that doesn't seem to the case now as they have been overtaken in that by Lidl and Aldi..
@dramaking85 I'm sorry to say that the information presented in this advertisement has become erroneous due to the passage of time between it''s original broadcast and whenever it is you are viewing it on RU-vid.
@lcmortensen if you look closely that is what I said 'pre-decimalisation we had the fathing' I did not say it was worth 1/4 of a pence today. (stricly speaking 'penny' refers to pre decimalisation where as 'pence' is post-decimalisation)
Jack Cohens idea was "Pile it high Sell It Low" He even launched Green Sheild Stamps In the Stores., Tesco were struggling so it was decided to close the stores for a few days and relaunch the company and since then it aint stopped.
I remember mojo chews been 1/2 penny each, and used to get 50p a week for some sweets, so i would buy 100 mojo's because i thought i was getting more for my money,lmao!
Bear in mind in 1977 the average weekly gross pay was £68. In 2015 it was £518 . These prices are probably more expensive in real terms; than prices today. White goods; TV's etc where very expensive compared to what people earned; compared to today. Good post though; interesting video.
This is the time when I got my first job taking home £100 per week at the age of 16. I was offered another 4 jobs before I left school. This was before thatcher came to power and started the rot.
Notice the bottle of "Quosh" - LMAO, I'd forgotten all about that. Nowadays, it's gotta be at least "not from concentrate" if not "freshly squeezed". What did we used to let enter our digestive system.........
The prices sound low, but the money was worth more back then. I'm not sure exactly how much, but it'd be something like 20p back then is equivelent to 50p now. You can't just compare the prices like that.
Ski Yogs, Use to love them single poys something you dnt get these days nor in that shape. Prices looked cheap then but then in the 70's/80' food was still looked at as being expensive. Hence why you had Kwik Save, Victor Value, Lo-Cost Foodstores and Presto as discount foodstores,, Lidl, Netto and Aldi weren't even heard of in the UK.
The prices in this advert seem cheap today but this was 1977! And workers weren't paid the wages they are now! There was no minimum wage for example. I was watching a programme from the 70's and it said a night watchman earned about £30 a week! I was born in the 70's and i can remember a lot of sweets were bigger than they are now-as MICKTHEMERC mentions.
@azazel637 the half penny existed from decimalisation of curency until the coin was withdrawn from circulation in 1983 as it cost more to make the coin than it was worth. Before decimalisation there was also the fathing - worth 1/4 of a penny.
"and a Half P", because the Half Penny coin that worth Half Pence / Half P / ½p was still in circulation, and remained in use until 1984. That way the United Kingdom still have the ability to the divide the Pound Sterling into 200 pieces, like the old 240 pieces in the old £sd system (or 480 pieces using Half Penny, or 960 pieces using Farthing). Unlike today where they're limited to only 100 pieces.
Don't forget that the imperial measurements skew things slightly. The 15 & 3/4 ounce Heinz bean can is bigger than the cans we have today, whereas the "half pound of Tesco butter" is smaller, at only 227g as opposed to the 250g packs we tend to see today. All those 1/2p prices were really annoying. Round them up or down!
Have you noticed these days when you join the checkout queue how friendly they are, "Do you want a hand with your packing?" Until the checkout closes then its "Sorry, I'm closeing...go on, fuck off" tsk!
Mars Bars now are the size Milky Ways were when i was a teenager, Mars were once twice if not three times larger than they are today. Wagon Wheels were also twice the size of todays yet look what we have to pay for them now, outrageous.
inflation is good. It keeps the world happy because everyone gets regular pay rises, and it encourages trade, since everything gets more expensive. If there was deflation, everyone would withdraw all money from banks and keep it at home, watching it grow more valuable, which would cause the whole banking system to collapse. This is bad for everyone, as you have seen in the past few years.
The UK economy probably would have improved more if they used an accounting only units, such as a Mil (aka a tenth Cent) or even a hundrenth of a Cent. It allowed Customers to have a simpler currency, but still allow merchants to have a much more flexible pricing system. Like for example, the Indonesian Rupiah (IDR). The lowest Coin Denomination is 100 Rupiah. But they still used 1~99 Rupiah in pricing. The amount paid is rounded to the nearest hundred, unless you pay using electronic transfer. Heck, the UK economy would improved a lot if they used the Rupiah instead of the Pound Sterling.
Comparatively speaking, the items such as those advertised in this ad are cheaper now. Good quality electrical goods are much cheaper now than they were in 1977. On the other hand, the price of petrol is comparatively much higher, and, of course, it's much, much harder to get a foot on the property ladder.
