Green Shield Stamps
Lick, stick, and eleven books later you have a toaster.
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 did not need.
The stamps were given out with almost everything and the books were filled by children on the kitchen table, because the licking was genuinely awful and adults delegated it.
The catalogue was the real product. It taught a generation to save up for something. It eventually turned into Argos, which tells you how well it worked.
Cost back then
Free with purchases
Goes for now
Filled books sell for £5–£20 as curiosities
