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Showing posts with label 1952. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1952. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Shelf life, February 1952

Here's a photo I found on the net recently; a tobacconists / newsagents from 62 years ago. By doing a quick search on eBay I've determined this is early February 1952 as the Picture Post covers in the foreground were dated Feb 2nd and the other Feb, 9th. 
Behind the shop keeper weighing his customer a few ounces of tobacco you'll notice a few comics on the shelves. Nyoka the Jungle Girl and Hopalong Cassidy etc were published in the USA in 1951 but presumably these are British editions as US comic imports hadn't yet resumed after WW2. (Also, the one on the shelf has the 10 cents price missing, so definitely a UK reprint.) 
Alongside all the reprints of American comics we can see issues of Illustrated Chips on the shelf too, and what looks like The Dandy peeking out from behind it. 
Elsewhere in the shop are a few pulp magazines such as Short Stories, plus an edition of Old Moore's Almanack and various other mags and fiction papers. Admittedly there aren't a lot of traditional British comics for sale in this particular shop. No Eagle, Film Fun, Radio Fun, or Comic Cuts for example, (perhaps they'd sold out) but all the publications are neatly displayed, and not a bagged comic in sight. Magazines and newspapers at the counter too, not scratch cards or lottery tickets. Reading matter took priority in the stock in those days. (Well, that and tobacco obviously.) 

This is pretty much how I remember newsagents 10 to 15 years later in the 1960s, so things didn't change a great deal after this photo was taken. These days, many such shops have been converted into mini-markets, with periodicals fighting for space with ever-expanding lines of tinned food, cereals, confectionery, cheap booze, and anything else the retailer needs to stock in order to keep the business going. Such is life.
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