Pirelli slippers ad, 1981

There are times in life when nothing seems to make sense.

Here's an example. What would you get if you combined Pirelli, the renowned maker of Formula 1 car tyres (and all the excitement that motor racing brings) with Kevin Keegan, the ultimate football superstar of the late-1970's and early 1980's? Something epitomising the excitement, glamour and exhilaration of international sport?

No. You'd get a pair of children's slippers, that's what.

Oh but no ordinary pair of children's slippers, that's for sure. These slippers came with a free gift of either a pin badge, sew-on badge or picture of Kevin Keegan, and all featured a distinctive Union Flag-like 'KK' logo. Oh the excitement...

Would we have loved it, LOVED IT if we'd received these as a Christmas present back in the early 80s? Probably not, but as celebrity tie-ins go, this one must be about the best there's ever been.

(Image reproduced by kind permission of combomphotos)

Esso Collection of Football Club Badges - The Adverts

We might start calling this 'Discovery Week' on The Football Attic...

After Rich J recently discovered the true source for his free Winterthur Subbuteo team, I was today able to shed more light on a previous post of my own.

One of the most popular posts on our website is one of the most unexpected successes. Back in September 2012, I reviewed a largely overlooked piece of memorabilia called the Esso Collection of Football Club Badges. Coming from the same people that brought you the England World Cup Coin Collection, this was a set of football insignia (made from foil) available individually from Esso petrol stations whenever a tankful of fuel was purchased.

When I wrote the article well over six months ago, I'd barely heard of the Esso badge collection, yet as if to prove I wasn't alone, thousands of you have been visiting this website to find out more about those shiny club crests yourselves.

And if you count yourself as one of that band of loyal and inquisitive souls, you're in luck because just today I've unearthed further evidence as to how those badges were marketed back in 1971.

As you can see from the two adverts shown, Esso, 'The Action Station', made a good job of promoting their shiny embossed badges to an audience of kids who would have seen these ads in their weekly comics. All the information was there to feed the excited juvenile mind: 76 metallic badges available FREE, some illustrated in all their glory, with the opportunity to pick up a collector card to display them on as well - also FREE.

And if you were impatient at the thought of Dad only picking up one badge every fortnight (as was most likely the case), you could buy a special 'Starter Pack' of 26 badges for just 20p - around £2.60 in today's money.

But the cleverness of the marketing didn't end there. With all the nous of anyone that collected cigarette cards in their youth but failed to complete a set, the Esso ad men also reminded kids that they should look to their peers for help in completing theirs.

That's why this second print ad also appeared with the wonderfully cheesy cut-out-and-wear badge that invited other kids to 'Stop me & swop one'. By wearing the badge on your lapel, you'd have that assured feeling of someone that would soon be completing his Esso collection while also looking like a demented glam rock bus conductor.

The Esso Collection of Football Club Badges - a wonderful piece of football memorabilia, brilliantly marketed.


(Advert images reproduced by kind permission of combomphotos)

England XI v Thames TV XI advert, 1979

While some people these days prefer to idle away their spare time pondering who they'd invite to their fantasy dinner parties, we football fans of a certain age can opt for something more enlightening. What better, you might say, than to put together your fantasy celebrity football team? Not much, we hear you cry.

Imagine, if you will, those heady days of the 1970's when a Pro-Celebrity Charity football match seemed to take place somewhere in the UK every other week. You could barely move for celebrity teams back then. TV commentators, politicians... everyone was at it. Rest assured the great, the good and the attention-seeking were all to be found pulling on a cheap Bukta strip at a neglected local football ground throughout the 70's, and to prove a point, here's an ad from surely the decade's biggest event.

The date was May 13th 1979 and the venue, ironically, was just down the road from the BBC TV studios in White City given that it featured a team of Thames TV All Stars. This, however, wasn't any ordinary charity football match. This was a match featuring the legendary figures that made up the 1966 World Cup-winning team, albeit with one or two absences. A high profile match indeed, and all to raise money for the Newsvendors Benevolent Institution, whatever that was. Probably an excuse to fund the bar at Thames TV's Euston Road studios, we shouldn't wonder.

Anyway, the ad shown gives us a couple of clues as to who was playing, namely Dennis Waterman (just starting out in the series Minder) and Richard O'Sullivan (still playing the role of Robin Tripp in Robin's Nest). But in the absence of actual written details, who else might have been playing for Thames TV that day? To put it another way, who would we like to have seen playing that day?

Beginning at the back, how about Kenny Everett in goal? Well they do say you have to be made to play in between the sticks... In defence, perhaps the wily experience of Eamonn Andrews, the height of Magpie's Mick Robertson, plus, in the spirit of the Charltons and Nevilles of the England team, how about the O'Connors - Tom and Des?

In midfield, intelligence and quick minds are needed, so my pick would be Hywel Bennett (Shelley), Brian Murphy (George and Mildred), Geoffrey Hayes (Rainbow) and Michael Aspel (Give Us A Clue). Not all of them would have intelligence AND a quick mind of course, but you can't have everything. That just leaves the lethal strike partnership up front of the aforementioned Dennis Waterman and Richard O'Sullivan.

Clearly I've had a misspent youth and too much time on my hands, but there it is - my fantasy Thames TV XI. If you've got any fantasy showbiz teams you'd like to put together, share them with us - admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com. We'll do our best to display them here on our website!

Official Programme of the 1970 World Cup

A cheery red cover invites you to thumb through the 66 pages of this souvenir programme created as a guide to the 1970 World Cup. Priced at just six shillings (or 30p for any Brits harbouring decimal thoughts a year ahead of their time), this was the official handbook guaranteed to help you get the most out of the FIFA’s ninth global tournament.


Or at least two-thirds of it was. Some 23 pages were set aside for adverts, thus proving that rampant commercialism isn’t as new as you think. But what adverts – some for official partners like British Leyland (England’s coach providers), some for popular brands of the day like Mobil oil, and some for utterly random items like Action Man dolls (complete with sporting outfits, mark you). Even the Esso 1970 World Cup Coin Collection gets a look in.

But never mind that, I hear you cry – what sort of useful information could I find inside such an august publication? Well once we’ve been informed who makes up the World Cup Organising Committee, we’re given a short history of the competition translated into four languages. Throughout the programme, everything’s available in English, French, Spanish and German and printed in black, blue, pink and black again respectively.

After that, there are details about the previous tournaments, the qualifying results for the 1970 Finals and the ever-useful fixture list for the sixteen teams taking part.

Then it’s onto an illustrated profile of those teams and the stadia they were due to play in. Taking one group at a time, we get a black and white photograph of each venue plus a line up for each squad with monochrome images of six of the players.

Here we realise the limitations brought about by a lack of colour – and the lack of a photographer. The harsh Mexican sunlight means the likes of V Pereda and I Calderon are shown half-and-half in extreme brightness and shadow. The Swedish players look like they’ve had their photos taken at the local police station, while Bulgaria’s finest appear so dim and grainy as to be barely identifiable at all.

Yet it’s the Czechoslovakian team that causes most concern. Their team are depicted not photographically but as a series of paintings the like of which wouldn’t look out of place in the waiting room of a mental institution. Whether the budget ran out to pay for a measly six photos at the headquarters of the Czech FA we’re not quite sure, but it’s safe to say even an 80-year-old Spanish woman could have done a better job than this.

Finally at the back, there are pages where you can fill in all the scores of the matches as the tournament progresses plus the player line-ups for the two competing finalists. All in all, a curious mix of content which, it could be said, lacked the excitement brought about by Pele, Banks and their ilk, but nonetheless tried valiantly to build on the success of the previous tournament four years before.

JVC 'Goal Makers' ad, 1981

We've featured adverts before on our blog site, adverts like this one for JVC taken from the back cover of National Geographic magazine in 1981.

Usually the main image is something football-related (else we wouldn't bother bringing it to your attention) and here we have an actual match in action, or so it seems. Chances are it's not really an actual match at all - more likely a staged scene at a US stadium (this was a US-syndicated magazine, after all) that made use of the resources before an NASL match.



By way of additional material, we also hear about JVC's wonderful range of audio and video equipment, including the 'revolutionary VHD video disc system' which, in hindsight, beautifully pricked the bubble of self-importance JVC were putting themselves in.

Yet that isn't really the most interesting part of this advert. For me, the best bit comes right at the bottom where we see a series of six logos printed in black and white.

The first one's very familiar as it's the official logo for the 1982 FIFA World Cup. Granted it loses something with the lack of red and yellow to illustrate the Spanish flag, but so be it.

The next logo, however, is very unfamiliar. It appears to be a map of Europe, stylised in such a way as to look loosely like a football. I'm guessing that's the case on account of a few hexagonal patches I can see, but others are anything but hexagonal (yes Italy, I'm looking at you). The inclusion of the UEFA acronym below suggests this is a little known logo for the Swiss-based governing body, but can any of you claim to have seen this ever before? Thought not...

Next up we have the lovely flower-inspired logo for the 1980 European Championships, a familiar sight for collectors of Panini's Europa 80 stickers and the great uncle of the logo created for Euro 2012. After that we have the traditional old logo for the US Soccer Federation, a logo that wouldn't look out of place on the jacket of an American military leader. It was crying out for a modern replacement and sure enough one duly came a decade later.

Speaking of logos that have since been replaced, we next have one for the Australian Soccer Federation - a pleasing if rooted-in-the-70s symbol that'd look good on any football shirt, in my humble opinion.

The last one, however, is a real beaut. Not so much a logo as a trophy shown in silhouette, we see the 'Gold Cup' or La Copa de Oro de Campeones Mundiales, to give it its full title. It was the prize for a little-known tournament with the nickname of Mundialito ('little World Cup') played once and once only between December 1980 and January 1981. Hosted by Uruguay, It's purpose was to celebrate 50 years of  World Cup history by bringing together all five former champions for a one-off winner-takes-all 'battle royale' (if that's not too many exuberant phrases to cram into once sentence).

With guest team Holland completing the two groups of three, the tournament played out before a conclusion that saw the host country beat Brazil 2-1 in a dream final for the locals. But what about that trophy, though? And what about those logos? Surely no advert for a Japanese home electronics company has ever seen such splendour.

Bovril advert, 1971

...and my, doesn't he look cheered at the prospect of drinking some hot Bovril?

Dunlop boots ad (featuring Trevor Brooking), 1980

An additional item from the recently featured match-day programme of the 1980 FA Cup Final.

For the record, Trev didn't wear the boots shown in the picture at Wembley - he wore plain black ones - but for all we know they may have been Dunlop anyway. Either way, a quick phone call to Kevin Keegan's agent would have got him a better boot deal, to say nothing of an England shirt with a proper badge on it.

Heineken advert, 1978

...to say nothing of the parts most dentists wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

Soccerboss / Goal! / Wembley ad, 1969

We wonder what the 'scientific approach' was that was used in 'Goal'? Anyone got any thoughts?

Flicking in a Winterthur Wonderland

The Picturesque City of Winterthur

Firstly I apologise for a such a poorly punned title. I did consider alternatives, but the play on Hot Chocolate’s ‘It started With a Kiss’ just wouldn’t work. ‘It started with an offer of a free Subbuteo team in a football magazine’ just doesn’t quite cut it.

So what am I going on about? Subbuteo! Despite being aware of Subbuteo from a very early age, being more into cricket than football meant I was more obsessed with obtaining Test Match than any flick-to-kick related products (and for £7.99 from Goldies toy shop, Test Match would be mine – replete with signed photo of the then England team... Botham, Gower et al. Now all that was required was some friends to play with... oh well, back in the box!)

As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I had seen lots of Subbuteoitems in the windows of the toy shop in town, but even when I first became beholden to football, it still never appealed. It just seemed way too nerdy and serious. Yes they had lovely shiny trophies, but one didn’t need to love Subbuteo to desire those. I'd already dipped my toe into the world of table football a few months earlier when I purchased an all white team from the bargain bin at that same toy shop, but other than drawing my own kits on the blank plastic kit canvas, I still wasn't really getting it.

Two factors combined to change my stance:

1. There were pretty much no other football toys out there at the time (Striker had disappeared a few years earlier and wouldn’t be available again until the '90s)
2. An offer of a free Subbuteo team in Shoot! Magazine.

Yes, a FREE Subbuteo team! Which one would I get? As the advert clearly stated, ‘You could even get your favourite team!’ The excitement!!! 

The form was filled in, the requisite Stamped Addressed Envelope (how I miss that phrase) included and the standard 28 days for delivery was waited. Finally, one day after school, a package had arrived. A package that had seen better days by the look of it; my SAE a shadow of its former self. Whether it had suffered some rain damage followed by a letterbox-induced shredding or had just been used as a football for the posties at the local sorting office I shall never know. Nor indeed did I care for I was possibly about to embark on my full-on Subbuteo journey. I tore open the parcel, excitement building... who could it be, who could it be???

Well... you know the answer to that. Kinda gave it away in the title, really.

So...Winterthur... Who???

According to Wikipedia, Winterthur (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪntərtuːr], English: /ˈvɪntərtʊər/) is a city in the canton of Zurichin northern Switzerland. It has the country's sixth largest population estimated at more than 100,000 people.

So there you have it. Furthermore, FC Winterthur play in the Swiss Challenge League, the second highest tier of Swiss football. They play at the Schützenwiese Stadium.

Their home colours are all red. Only, they weren’t back then. Their home colours were white shorts and socks and white shirts with, if the Subbuteo figure painters are to be believed, three vertical gashes to the upper body. I’m assuming they were supposed to be uniform stripes, but the ones on my figures definitely looked like the result of some coordinated machete attack. Guess that would explain the blank stares on their plastic faces. The pic below is from an eBay listing (not mine - I’m holding on to my beloved Winterthur!) Mine came in more modern Subbuteo packaging (landscape layout, not vertical), but the figures are identical.

The Walking(?) Wounded

I now had two complete teams and, along with some cheap balls from the same bargain bin as before, could fully immerse myself in the murky waters of Subbuteo. Now all I needed was a pitch...and maybe some corner flags...and obviously a ref and linesman. A scoreboard would be quite useful too. Oh dear. In one fell swoop my interest had gone from passing to 'collector'. 0 to Geek in under 5 seconds...

And so yet another expensive pastime came into existence. One I shall delve into in greater detail in future, but for now, Merry Christmas people of Winterthur... and please, get to a hospital – those wounds need serious attention!

Bukta 'Nylon Soccer Jerseys' ad, 1971

They say the football played in England back then was electric, and now we have all the evidence to see why...

Steve Earl's Football Programmes

Since I first bought a copy of Shoot! for 42p (a price rise of 2 pence on the previous week’s issue I found out later...scandalous!), I have always been drawn to the adverts section near the back of football magazines. The promise of football-related goodies, often in full colour, tempting me all these years. 

Looking back on 25 years' worth of ads, it’s funny how some things have changed and others not. The ads aimed at kids have changed dramatically, moving with the times, as one would expect. Pastel shaded drawings of rosy faced children in England pyjamas (the ad was for football pyjamas, I'd like to point out) replaced with the headache inducing ‘LOOK AT MY AWESOME STUFF IT’S SO AWESOME AAAAAAAARGH!!!!!’ style adverts prevalent in today’s brain mush kids’ football rags.

Adverts aimed at the older end of the age spectrum have changed little; their sober, informative format giving the consumer just what they want – information about what the product is, what it does, how you can obtain it and, in the ‘olden’ days, the standard line about allowing 28 days for delivery.

One specific advert that never seems to have changed is the one that always caught my eye as a lad and still does now.  That of Steve Earl’s Football Programmes.

Advert from Shoot!, July 1986

 

When Saturday Comes, January 2012

The same goofy, child-bearing-hipped football fan – arm still raised aloft, still giving that curious thumbs up, possibly referring to the FREE programmes (NB: in these hard economic times, this is now just a free programme catalogue) the ad’s strapline has always carried and still clutching a handful of programmes. This figure has been invading my conscious mind for over 21 years and yet, despite this apparently excellent marketing device, the crucial piece of info missing from my memory when I came to research this was... who the hell is this advert for? For as much as I could remember the cartoon, that it was for football programmes and that it offered FREE programmes, I had no idea who was selling / giving them away.

In truth this is probably down to me not really being into football programmes, so I never felt the need to read past the first few lines. I did consider sending off for some free ones back in the day, the offer of free things by post having a very strong allure to a child whose only real post up until that point had been the limited edition Star Wars figures (send 3 names / proof of purchases from the backing cards).

Upon further research (reading my old copies of Shoot! after a trip to the garage), I discovered it was for the aforementioned Steve Earl.  I also discovered, to my disappointment and mild horror as it almost torpedoed the whole angle of this post, that in the copies of Shoot! from 1990, the advert had shrunk to only a few lines and more importantly, Mr GoofyProgrammeMan wasn’t there!!!  Rising costs and an imminent recession obviously took their toll and poor old GPM was laid off. It also now cost a whopping 50p, albeit in unused stamps, to obtain the desired free, sorry, FREE programmes. 

 

1990 - FREE Football Programmes still available, but no Goofy Programme Man?

Thankfully, despite worldwide economic meltdown, Steve seems to have fully embraced the value of solid branding and restored good ol' Goofy to his rightful place...just to the left of the title.

One more thing I love about this advert is that, through all the years, the font may have changed, GPM may have taken a sabbatical, colour may have arrived, but one thing that has remained constant is the address.  Broad Street, Bungay, Suffolk NR35 1AH.  I can just picture it now...actually, with Google Maps and street view I can do just that...so here it is...

The Promised Land!

Steve Earl's Football Programmes, I may never have sent off for your enticing offer, but you have been a steady rock in my turbulent life for two and a half decades and for that, I salute you!

Mobil 'Football Club Badges' ad, 1977

Mobil Football Club Badges, "all in the correct club colours and they're made of cloth material so you can stitch or stick them on to clothing*..."

* "We do not recommend that the badges be washed as this may have a detrimental effect."