Saturday 28 February 2009

Petrol Freebies

Guzzisue started when she decided to post this about Ian's reward for getting a good mark for a history essay. Instead of getting a gold star he received Co-op stamps. This started with people reminiscing about not only Co-op stamps but also Green Shield stamps.

Affer on his On the road to who-knows-where blog takes the subject to the next step with his recollection of saving Green Shield stamps at his company's expense.

Ian is at last clearing some of his belongings out of his father's attic and came across these collections from the early 1970's.

Shell came out with this collection of Historic Cars,

to do battle with Esso, who liked to have football themes.


The England World Cup Team collection may look complete but alas there are two Frances Lee coins. Ian is missing the one of Henry Newton, so if anyone has a spare I would like to obtain this for him.
The above collection was in celebration of 100 years of the FA Cup. The final collection is a set of football club badges.

The coins were given to the motorist, one for every 4 gallons of petrol purchased, while the badges were two in a pack. It was not easy for Ian to collect these as he had to alternate between his sister and himself. To make it more difficult his father only used four gallons of petrol a week, meaning he got one coin or pack of badges a fortnight.

In the late 70's to early 80's, Ian worked in a self service petrol station in Nottingham, Alan Pond's, who came up with a "discount" scheme. Here if the motorist paid the full pump price for fuel they received a "free gift". This was often a glass, but would also include this like cassette tapes, mugs or after shave.

Below is the front cover and an inside story from the Alan Pond Group newspaper given to staff during this period. Ian was made redundant from the group in 1981 and within two years the company was no more.
Ian has still got several boxes to sort through so i'm sure there will be some more gems hidden away.

Don't forget to have a go at my competition here.

6 comments:

Baron's Life said...

This is a fabulous collection guys...!
You're lucky to have it and should hang on to it if you can
Exceptionally nice
Cheers

Affer said...

Oh Lord....this is all setting me off on one of those sit-on-the-settee-and-drift-off journies! I now recall having a ghastly set of green tumblers from Alan Pond. Nice to think that Ian may have handed over some of them...
But also, rattling around my brain, is a memory of a promotion in which one collected half bank-notes which one then hoped to match with another half to be able to claim the cash....Could it have been something like 'Shell Money'?

bikerted said...

Cannot recall Shell Money but Alan Pond did something along those lines. Every customer, no matter how much had been purchaesd, was given a scratchcard. On each half was a number and these were added up to several winning combinations. Many customers could not be bothered with these so if the customer count on the till did not match the amount of cards issued, the cashier may have dropped some into their pocket.
If Ian's memory is correct the main prize went to someone down London way. All up north were sure this was a fix.

Baron: Like many things the value is in the memories they hold.

Affer: Only one set of green tumblers?

Affer said...

Ha! I knew I wasn't so senile...ish. Thanks to my good friend Mo (who is somewhat older even than I), the promotion rattling in my brain was called 'Shell Make Money'. It goes back to about 1966 originally, but was rerun (I think) twice more, in the early 80s and again in mid 1990s. It also became mired in legal action! This site explains some of it: http://shellnews.net/PDFs/Campaign27Ap84.2page.pdf

bikerted said...

Nice link Affer. It's a shame the article is not complete. Wonder if it would mention the Scrabble Game from Mobil (?) in the early 1980's.
Guzzisue keeps going on about some place mats featuring towns in GB that may have been a petrol promotion. Can you throw any light on this?

Affer said...

I cannot remember place mats...but then I sometimes can't remember a lot of things! What I DO remember are Esso Tiger Tails, stick-on bullet holes, Smurfs, glasses of all shapes and sizes....and somebody once did kites too!