Originally published at: This supermarket time machine will take you back to the grocery aisles of 1971 | Boing Boing
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That pyramid of oranges just seems like a bad idea.
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ALMOST EVERY CHECKOUT HAS A CASHIER!
I remember those days…
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are they giving out green stamps?
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Definitely brings back memories!
All those newspapers available outside, and a row of candy machines, dressing nicely even to just run an errand, the child having to wait until the grownups go through the doorway before it’s her turn, etc.
Inside, other than the prices, it doesn’t look that different.
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Ah, the 1970s.
You won’t believe how much brown, orange, and cream we can fit into this decade.
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haha! my 70s VW bus was root beer brown with orange and cream stripes!
loved that bus. hated the color.
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And my dad would still complain about them.
Yeah, why did it take grocers 50+ years to figure out baskets? And who wants the oranges at the bottom of the pile?
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Heh, the giant scales dominating the produce section.
And I wanna know more about that 7 day milk diet.
The checkout was easily the most interesting bit for me. Giving the cart directly to the cashier who unloads each item and adds it to the total? Crazy! At first I thought they didn’t have conveyors at all, but then those showed up later, albeit not nearly as large as the ones I’m familiar with.
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King Korn, perhaps?
And we still don’t have anti-gravity shopping carts.
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The idea of decorating the aisles with flags of foreign countries is not a new one. My guess is that the flags do not guaranty authenticity–though that’s probably still the case.
All those open refrigeration units merrily wasting electricity.
No lines. Probably because as someone pointed out, the counters are staffed.
The top oranges.
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This sort of thing was viewed as propaganda by the Eastern Bloc. I mean, whole pyramids of citrus? That’s implausible. Surely, citrus would be a thing that only millionaires would have access to in secret elite shops akin to the Intershops that high ranking Party members had access to!
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I know of grocery stores near me who still use that style of refrigeration, Largely I see it used for meat and dairy products, but I also know of at least one bargain level store that keeps frozen items in them.
Boris Yeltsin seeing that Texas supermarket in 1989 really did a number on his belief that communism was working. So hell yeah this was propaganda, even if it wasn’t the usual made up, exaggerated or biased stuff.
Edit: A video to match a video, here’s a Moscow grocery store in 89
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From an energy saving standpoint, I wish more stores had horizontal freezers because they retain the cold better, more so if they have doors. However, from grocery stocking experience, I think the general public are terrible at utilizing them and you wind up with a lot of damaged merchandise and wasted energy because they can’t be bothered to put things back properly if they later decide not to purchase.
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Even as a 3-4 year old I could tell that something was not quite… right… about the prevailing design palette of that period.
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A Canadian friend married his Chinese wife in the 90s. He was with her the first time she walked into a Canadian supermarket. She audibly gasped when she saw piles of oranges.
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