Last weekend I visited the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising (MBPA) – a little piece of heaven for a nostalgia junkie such as myself. This large-scale time capsule buried (sort of – it was difficult to find!) somewhere between Notting Hill Gate and Westbourne Park contained thousands of packs, poster ads, toys and games from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. It was astonishing to see how much consumer culture – and the sociopolitical environment influencing it – had changed over this period; you certainly wouldn’t see a Golly figure in an advert today, or outlandish claims about the benefits of cigarettes and alcohol.
There was one particular story of social transformation told by the posters and packaging of the museum that struck me: the story of women’s emancipation. Near the entrance, women were portrayed through ads as entirely domestic creatures, primarily concerned with cleaning products and the family's dietary requirements. Later on postcards ridiculing the feminist movement served as signs of women's desire for reform, but also of the mounting resistance to reform. It is significantly later on in this time tunnel of a museum, past the World War II propagandist images of the gardening/cooking goddesses of the Home Front, when women begin to be presented in a markedly different way. Seemingly out of nowhere, Sexualised Woman appears on the scene – and it appears that she can’t stay away from ads for alcohol or other products just a tad more glamorous than washing powder. Keep walking and you reach Spice Girls memorabilia, which somehow failed to inspire any “girl power” in me but did oddly signify progress.
It was interesting to see how the changing face of brands, packaging and advertising reflects more than shifts in consumer tastes. You can take them as frivolous, or recognise that consumer artefacts also convey important milestones in history - albeit in a way that can be quite tongue-in-cheek.
Anyway, the MBPA is good fun and one for when you want something a bit quirkier than your average London museum.
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