Free 21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) by Steve Stack Page A

Customers collected them and stuck them into books; completed books could then be traded in for items of differing value from a catalogue, or from one of the many Green Shield Stamp catalogue shops.
    You had to collect loads of the buggers to be able to get hold of anything remotely worthwhile, but that didn’t stop the little green things proliferating across the ’60s and ’70s.
    You would need to spend a little over £32 to fill one book. That was a lot of money in those days, equivalent to over £350 today. That one book, which would have taken you considerable time to fill, could be exchanged for items such as a mouth organ or a brush and comb set.
    More serious collectors, those who stacked up piles of books, could go for rather grander fare. In the 1960s, 33¼ books would get you a Kenwood Chef, an item many kitchens would have been proud to have. Of course, the amount of money you would have to spend to obtain said food mixer was about the price of a small car. Although, to be fair, if you were spending the money on your weekly shop and petrol anyway, it was just a case of being patient and licking lots of stamps.
    The company was founded in 1958 by Richard Tompkins, who adapted an idea from the United States to fit the British and Irish markets. It was hugely successful for nearly two decades, and there were many imitators, including S&H Pink Stamps, Yellow Stamps, Blue Star, and Happy Clubs. At one point in the early ’60s there was even a ‘Stamp War’ when Fine Fare supermarkets started offeringthe Pink Stamps, and Tesco countered by giving away Green Shield Stamps for the first time.
    The business came a cropper in the late-’70s, when competition between supermarkets hit new heights, and customers were more interested in cheap produce than collecting stamps. When Tesco pulled out of the scheme in 1977, the writing was on the wall for the little green shield.
    The company limped on until 1983, when it stopped issuing stamps altogether. There was an attempt to reinvent the scheme in the late ’80s, but by 1991 the Green Shield Stamp company was no more.
    It does live on, however, in some form at least. The Green Shield Stamp catalogue shops were rebranded as Argos in 1973, and continue trading to this day, with people actually paying cash for items that previous generations would get for free after purchasing 2,500 packets of fish fingers over 13 years, or something like that.
    And, of course, the concept was brought up to date in recent years by the introduction of loyalty cards, air miles, and Nectar points.
     
    Dodo Rating:

High Street Names
    This is a roll call of chains and shops that were once on every high street in the country, but are now no longer with us. How many did you use to shop in?
Abbey National, ABC Cinemas, Alfred Marks, Andy’s Records,
Anglian Building Society, Athena, Bejam, Bradford & Bingley,
Brentford Nylons, C&A, Canon Cinemas, Chelsea Girl,
Concept Man, Courts, Curtess, Deep Pan Pizza Co., DER,
Dewhursts, DH Evans, Dickens & Jones, Dillons, Dixons,
Dominics Wine Merchants, Elf, Etam, Fina, Fine Fare, Fosters,
Freeman, Hardy & Willis, Gateway, Golden Egg Restaurants,
Granada, Happy Eater, Home & Colonial, International,
James Thin, John Menzies, Lilley & Skinner, Liptons,
Littlewoods, Lyons Cafés, MFI, Midland Bank, Mister Byrite,
MVC, NafNaf, National Provincial Bank, Ottakars, Our Price,
Payless, Pizzaland, Pollards, Presto, Principles, Radio Rentals,
Ratners, Rediffusion, Richard Shops, Rumbelows, Safeway,
Savacentre, Saxone, Swan & Edgar, Tandy, Texas Homecare,
The Electricity Shop, The Gas Shop, Thresher, Timothy Whites,
Tower Records, Unwins, VG, Victoria Wine, Wavy Line,
Woolwich, Woolworths, World of Leather.
    These are just a small selection of well-known names that have gone bust, been rebranded or taken over, or just slowly faded away over the past couple of decades. Now let’s have a closer look at the stories behind the demise of some of these.
     
    Dodo