1950s
1950
Bird's Custard Powder
The yellow tin that made proper custard out of cornflour, and has barely changed its packaging since.
🍽️ Food & Drink
The 1950s
📻 1950s
Rationing ends, the telly arrives, and everything is suddenly in colour. Except the telly.
Britain came off the ration book and straight into a decade of Formica, Bakelite and the first television set on the street. Coffee bars, Meccano, the Festival of Britain hangover and a milkman who knew your name.
1950–1959
24 things
Sounds like: Skiffle, the Light Programme, and a wireless warming up
How the decade went
- 1951 Festival of Britain opens on the South Bank
- 1953 Coronation: the nation crowds round one TV set
- 1954 Rationing finally ends
- 1955 ITV launches and adverts arrive
- 1958 The first stretch of motorway opens
Everything from the 1950s
1950s
1950
Eagle Comic
A comic founded by a vicar, printed to a standard nothing else matched, and read by close to a million children a week.
📰 Comics & Magazines
1950s
1950
Listen With Mother
Fifteen minutes of stories and nursery rhymes on the Home Service at quarter to two, aimed at under-fives and the mothers who needed a sit down.
📺 Telly✏️ School
1950s
1950
Meccano
Perforated steel strips, brass nuts and a tiny spanner. Meccano built engineers, and quite a lot of frustration.
🧸 Toys & Games
1950s
1950
The Bakelite Telephone
The GPO 332 sat in the hall on a special table, weighed about the same as a brick, and had a drawer for the numbers you actually rang.
📟 Tech & Gadgets🛋️ Around The House
1950s
1950
The Morris Minor
Alec Issigonis' small car: cheap, honest, endlessly repairable, and still on the road seventy years later.
🚗 Cars & Transport
1950s
1951
The Larder And The Meat Safe
A marble shelf, a mesh-fronted meat safe and a fly-proof gauze window. Refrigeration for people who did not have refrigeration.
🛋️ Around The House🍽️ Food & Drink
1950s
1951
The Wall's Stop Me And Buy One Tricycle
A man on a tricycle with a cold box on the front, ringing a bell along the seafront and through the estates.
🍽️ Food & Drink🏬 Shops & High Street
1950s
1952
Spam Fritters
Tinned meat in batter. A school dinner staple that divides every family gathering to this day.
🍽️ Food & Drink✏️ School
1950s
1952
The Pools Coupon
A coupon collected from the door each week, filled in with a biro, and checked against the teleprinter on Saturday teatime.
⚽ Sport
1950s
1953
The Coronation Television
More than two million television sets were bought or rented for the 1953 Coronation, and most of them had twenty people sitting in front of them.
📺 Telly🛋️ Around The House
1950s
1953
The Trolleybus
Buses that ran on overhead wires: quiet, fast off the mark, and prone to coming off the poles at junctions.
🚗 Cars & Transport
1950s
1954
Rationing Ending
Meat was the last thing to come off ration in July 1954, ending a system that had outlasted the war by nine years.
🍽️ Food & Drink🏬 Shops & High Street
1950s
1955
Corona Pop Man
A lorry, a crate of glass bottles in colours that do not exist in nature, and threepence back for every empty you returned.
🍽️ Food & Drink
1950s
1955
Ludo And The Lid Of The Box
Four counters, one die, and a rule about sixes that every family interpreted differently.
🧸 Toys & Games🛋️ Around The House
1950s
1955
The Rag And Bone Man
Scrap metal and old clothes collected door to door, in exchange for a few coppers or a goldfish in a bag.
🏬 Shops & High Street🛋️ Around The House
1950s
1956
The Coffee Bar
Gaggia machines arrived from Italy and gave British teenagers the first indoor space that was theirs.
🍽️ Food & Drink🎵 Music
1950s
1956
The Dansette Record Player
Portable, two-tone, with an autochanger that stacked eight singles and dropped them one at a time onto the turntable.
🎵 Music🛋️ Around The House
1950s
1956
The Test Card And Closedown
Broadcasting stopped. An announcer said goodnight, the anthem played, and the screen went to a dot.
📺 Telly
1950s
1957
The Twin Tub Washing Machine
Two drums, one on wheels, and a Monday morning that took the whole morning.
🛋️ Around The House📟 Tech & Gadgets
1950s
1958
Clackers In The Playground
You swung them until they clacked top and bottom. Then they shattered, and that was the end of clackers.
🧸 Toys & Games✏️ School
1950s
1958
Green Shield Stamps
Britain's first mass loyalty scheme: stamps at the petrol pump and the grocer, pasted into books and redeemed against a catalogue of things you d
🏬 Shops & High Street
1950s
1958
Winkle Picker Shoes
The Teddy Boy shoe: exaggerated points, worn with drainpipes and a drape jacket, hated by every parent in the country.
👖 Fashion
1950s
1959
Vesta Curry
Dehydrated curry, rehydrated on the hob, served with rice that came in the same packet and noodles you fried yourself.
🍽️ Food & Drink
The Friday Rewind
One hit of nostalgia, every Friday.
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