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Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

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Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#31

Post by atchoo »

_dain_ wrote: post #13
cjs_ac wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wait a minute, wut? Explain to this former colonist what cultural cue he's missing, because how is it possible that 42% of a country's population lives in public housing? Or is it not "public housing", as in U. S.-style subsidized housing? Or were times just that bad in Great Britain in the 70s? There were a few factors. 1. Yes, many people were very poor. Today, many Britons are still very poor. 2. In the war, an…

They also introduced the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, which made it illegal to build any kind of housing or modify existing housing without asking permission from the government. We would not need council housing nowadays if the private sector were simply allowed to fill the market demand. We are no longer in the days when children played in the rubble of cities flattened by the Luftwaffe. Blaming Thatcher…

Please no-one pay this extreme ideological crankery any note.

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#32

Post by HeckFeck »

Argos had a website put up where you could browse every one of their published catalogues. I think they put it up in 2020 to commemorate the ending of their printed catalogue.

Alas, they weren't PDF or any sort of download and the website was discontinued shortly thereafter. Quite the shame; what I'd do to see the 2005 or 2007 catalogues again!

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#33

Post by switch007 »

lm28469 wrote: post #23
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How unprofitable. Much better to use bits of metallised plastic which flake to death in a few years. Cheaper to make and those suckers'll be back soon enough. You can probably fix the flex properly too, new ones often have a moulded captive boot in the cable instead of a screw clamp.

Using plastic is much better, especially for the parts in contact with water. You wouldn't want boiling water in contact with metal, it might leach chemicals that would end up in your system

Huh? Millions of cooks every day boil liquid in metal pans. What’s the issue?

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#34

Post by ris »

scrumper wrote: post #26

Wow, what a trip. The Russell Hobbs chrome-on-copper (number 11, first page of the '76 catalog) is like a wormhole to my childhood kitchen. I remember that red rocker switch so clearly now, how it felt to turn it on and off. It was beautifully spring loaded, so you'd push it a bit then the spring would take over and snap it on. My mum taught me how to make her a cup of tea when I was old enough to reach it - well bef…

Was going to say the same thing, only ours was the stainless steel one (No. 10). Lasted us well into the 90s.

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#35

Post by tragomaskhalos »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #20
danw1979 wrote: post #19

All those kettles from the 70s look realy well made. Maybe it’s the abundant chrome.

How unprofitable. Much better to use bits of metallised plastic which flake to death in a few years. Cheaper to make and those suckers'll be back soon enough. You can probably fix the flex properly too, new ones often have a moulded captive boot in the cable instead of a screw clamp.

Last time I bought a kettle my wife did her nut because I went for the 20 quid option rather than spending £80 on some prop from a lifestyle magazine, however I maintain that my reasoning was sound - all modern kit is indeed built with a depressingly imminent obsolescence, to which price point confers only limited immunity, and this is exacerbated by the brutal hardness of London water, which will scale and calcify any appliance that so much as looks at it.

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#36

Post by Graffur »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #22
mjburgess wrote: post #4

Amongst the upper working class, the argos catalogue featured as a central part of holiday (christmas esp.) life until perhaps the mid-2000s. You could walk into any argos and take one of the 1000pg+ catelogues of massive pallets of them, and paw them over days. The working class, typically unsentimental in the UK, would then purchase the child's designated item for xmas. The pretence of "santa clause", i think, more…

Kind of off topic but the actual "Santa isn't real" moment for me was that some children really believed it . To us, it was always on the same level as the fairies (led by BDFL Tinkerbell, obviously) in my grandmother's garden or the tooth fairy: fun to imagine but clearly, literally, make-believe and I thought everyone was just playing up to the same fun thought-experiment. And, indeed, the Argos catalogue was, for…

Most children do not know what a "thought-experiment" is. I actually feel very sorry for you and other children who never believed.

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#37

Post by adhesive_wombat »

Graffur wrote: post #36
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of off topic but the actual "Santa isn't real" moment for me was that some children really believed it . To us, it was always on the same level as the fairies (led by BDFL Tinkerbell, obviously) in my grandmother's garden or the tooth fairy: fun to imagine but clearly, literally, make-believe and I thought everyone was just playing up to the same fun thought-experiment. And, indeed, the Argos catalogue was, for…

Most children do not know what a "thought-experiment" is. I actually feel very sorry for you and other children who never believed.

Well I didn't know it was called that at the time. If I recall, a book, perhaps Alice in Quantumland, or some other similar book named the idea for me eventually. I also didn't know how what oxygen was called, once upon a time, and somehow managed to breathe.

Anyway, I feel grateful to my parents that they managed to feed imagination without deceit, and I also appreciated that gifts came from my parents, some requested, some unbidden and all with love.

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#38

Post by kwhitefoot »

scrumper wrote: post #26

Wow, what a trip. The Russell Hobbs chrome-on-copper (number 11, first page of the '76 catalog) is like a wormhole to my childhood kitchen. I remember that red rocker switch so clearly now, how it felt to turn it on and off. It was beautifully spring loaded, so you'd push it a bit then the spring would take over and snap it on. My mum taught me how to make her a cup of tea when I was old enough to reach it - well bef…

> you'd push it a bit then the spring would take over and snap it on.

Ah, a proper toggle switch! I thought they had gone the way of the dodo.

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#39

Post by _dain_ »

atchoo wrote: post #31
_dain_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also introduced the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, which made it illegal to build any kind of housing or modify existing housing without asking permission from the government. We would not need council housing nowadays if the private sector were simply allowed to fill the market demand. We are no longer in the days when children played in the rubble of cities flattened by the Luftwaffe. Blaming Thatcher…

Please no-one pay this extreme ideological crankery any note.

feel free to give a counterargument anytime

Re: Argos Catalogue Kettle Pages, 1976/1985 (2017)

#40

Post by actionfromafar »

lm28469 wrote: post #23
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How unprofitable. Much better to use bits of metallised plastic which flake to death in a few years. Cheaper to make and those suckers'll be back soon enough. You can probably fix the flex properly too, new ones often have a moulded captive boot in the cable instead of a screw clamp.

Using plastic is much better, especially for the parts in contact with water. You wouldn't want boiling water in contact with metal, it might leach chemicals that would end up in your system

Exactly the reverse.
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