It all started with a packet of Munchies. Little did a 16-year-old Robert Opie know that this tube of chocolate-coated caramel sweets represented a rich social history. Michael Bennett unravels the story

‘All I’ve been doing all my life is putting this jigsaw puzzle together,’ he says. Part archivist, part collector and part historian, Opie now curates the Museum of Brands in Notting Hill, London, UK, and spends his time researching, sourcing, cataloguing and fleshing out the tapestry of the British packaging story, tracing the myriad impulses and innovations that have led us from the Industrial Revolution to modern consumer culture.

As a teenager, Opie was already an avid collector, having dallied with stones, coins and stamps. However, he grew disenchanted with what he saw as an over- subscribed stamp-collecting world. ‘What was the point in just treading in other people’s footsteps?’ he says. ‘I wanted to do something different and worthwhile.’ After a brief foray collecting stationery, Opie discovered packaging. ‘Discovered is the wrong word – you don’t discover packaging, it was more a realisation that here was this huge subject, vast beyond people’s imagination, that hadn’t been studied, that wasn’t being saved, and yet was a vibrant part of the way we lived.’

In the late 1960s Opie began stockpiling contemporary packaging. As a student, he would get to know people working in shops and ask them to save window displays for him. As his habit grew, he would find himself scouring auctions and antique fairs, then trading with other collectors or seeking donations of packaging, all the while augmenting his stock with modern products from supermarkets.

With a sizeable collection amassed, stored across warehouses and friends’ houses, he opened the first Museum of Brands in Gloucester in 1984. Since then, Opie has seen his stock double in size, prompting him to relocate the museum to a prime spot in Notting Hill in December 2005.

A mirror to society

It’s a strange thing to want to collect something so disposable, and Opie admits it. ‘These things were never meant to survive.’ However, he says that when all 12,500 items are assembled in the ‘right way’ – both chronologically and visually – the collection becomes a mirror held up to the culture of the last 150 years.

‘It’s a brand new way of looking at history,’ he says. ‘It’s a way of understanding how everyday people have lived. When you watch a television programme on any of these periods, it’s told through politics and wars and perhaps fashion or entertainment. But you can do exactly the same with brands, and that story is almost more part of us than any other.’

Everyday objects that surround us form the wallpaper of our lives, says Opie. ‘Someone who smokes will probably know that cigarette packet better than their wife, because they look at it more often.’ Whether cigarettes, toothpaste, breakfast cereal or coffee, packaging can sometimes reside in a blind spot for members of the public, so much so that any changes in design often pass by unseen.

‘Unless you keep a record of where people have been, you don’t see the progress that has been made, because you’ve got no benchmark,’ he says. ‘Each generation needs to understand how the previous one got over [various hurdles], learning from the past to improve the future.’

‘I want people to come here to respect this fundamental subject, which doesn’t have the status it should have because of our throwaway society. It has never been understood or respected and that to me is incredibly important.’

Opie sees himself as not just a collector, but as a man trying to process the information and understand what he calls the social story of packaging. The history of brands, he says, is the history of a society with packaging reflecting the various desires, aspirations, trends and changes.

This can be seen quite clearly in the enduring power of an image to promote a package. Instead of models or pop stars, the Victorian era’s favourite pin-up was Britannia, who would feature on in a number of chest-beating, Empire-lauding packages, only to be replaced in the 20th Century by the brave new technologies of the day such as automobiles, motorbikes, and aeroplanes. These in turn gave way to the patriotism of the Second World War, followed by images of the space-race or babyboomer families in the 1950s, the Beatles in the 1960s and so on through the ages.

Faded glory?

A common experience for visitors to the museum is a sudden glow of nostalgia when they start to recognise packages from their own lifetime. However, with the multifarious distractions of a screen-based culture, one has to wonder whether packaging can ever again hold quite the same appeal that a 1980s, hologram-bearing box Frosties may have had.

Opie also warns of looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses. ‘A lot of people say they prefer the old-fashioned packaging because it looks nicer, and that may be true, but Victorian or Edwardian packaging was much heavier and costlier to produce and deliver. The history is important to show how much progress has been made – a tin can still looks like a Victorian can, but you know it’s vastly reduced in weight and is far more efficient than it used to be.’

‘I think in 30 years’ time, people will still be saying the same about the 2000s, I don’t know what it is. Is it nostalgia? Because it’s different, it has an appeal. Maybe the visual message is not very good at the moment – I can think of a number of modern designs that are horrendous.’ He adds that perhaps the gradual reduction in size and the use of cardboard has restricted the use of striking images on packaging. ‘All these things add up to a blander world, and you have to weigh up the difference between being practical and economical and environmentally friendly against the message that product is giving out.’ 

A life’s work

Though his work has given the British public an account of the nation’s packaging history, Opie is not a man to rest on his laurels. ‘Nothing is ever finished,’ he says. ‘You give me one million pounds and I could create another floor here and easily fill it.’ Opie is always operating in with a delicious sense of anticipation that tomorrow could find him discovering something completely unforeseen. ‘How can I find a pre-1930 can of baked beans? I just hope one day it will appear, maybe it’s underneath somebody’s floorboards. Top of my ‘want’ list at the moment is a wartime tin of Spam. Where is it? Will it be thrown away before I can get it?’

Further information

www.museumofbrands.com