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Wartime Advertisements
The following advertisements are from two British newspapers dating from the Second World War.
This first one is from The Sunday Pictorial edition of March 11, 1945.
Wartime Advertisement for Bananas
Alongside the advertisement for bananas you can see reports that war was almost won. And so it proved to be with the war ending formally on May 8, 1945 – a war which for Britain had begun in 1939.
Atlantic Shipping Losses
More than 30,000 merchant seamen died and more than 2,500 merchant ships were sunk in the Atlantic Ocean during the Second World War.
More than 13 million tons of shipping ended up at the bottom of the sea.
That is equivalent to taking all the 20 million motor cars on the roads in Britain today and dropping them in the Atlantic.
Essential Items
The lack of essential items in Britain was so great that even the iron railings around parks and churchyards were cut down and carted off to the steel furnaces to aid the war effort.
Rationing During and After The War
With only essential things being carried across the Atlantic, many things became unobtainable luxuries in Britain.
Even essential things were in short supply. So, from 1940 onwards, every family in Britain had a ration book that entitled it to a certain amount of bread, sugar, meat, eggs and other food items.
Petrol (gasoline) was rationed and many products made from metal were no longer made because the factories had switched to war production.
Yes, We Have No Bananas
Bananas – that exotic fruit from the New World – were off the menu and unobtainable throughout the war.
You might have thought that with the end of the war bananas would be back, but in fact they did not reappear in the shops until 1952.
That was because the cost to Britain of conducting the war had been so great that many items were simply too expensive to import even when peace was restored.
Or it was because there were other more essential things that needed to be imported first.
The advertisement is from The Sunday Times edition of April 8, 1945.
Wartime Advertisements
Advertising the Unobtainable
As these ads show, producers felt they had to keep their products in the mind of the public. So they advertised things that were unobtainable, with a promise that one day they would be back.
Chocolate and other sweets (candies) were some of the last things to come off rationing. That was in 1953, eight years after the war ended.
When Mackintosh’s, the sweets (candies) manufacturer, placed this ad, I wonder whether they realized how long it would be before sweets reappeared in the shops?
It is easy to see that the manufacturer of the Goblin vacuum cleaner would be worried. People had managed with what they had for six years. Perhaps they wouldn’t want to buy new vacuum cleaners when they became available again…
As things turned out, Goblin lived on after the war and are still made today.
I really don’t know why the producers felt they needed to advertise bananas, though.
People liked them so much that those who lived during the war still talk about the first banana they had after being denied them for thirteen years.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I read this article last night and to be honest I never realised that bananas were available pre-war, fascinating stuff.
I would not have know either but for the fact that it has come up in conversation more than once with people I have spoken to who were born before the war began. I know people like to reminisce, and the older they get, the more they like to do it.
Your comment made me wonder when bananas were introduced into England, and the answer may surprise you.
According to the records of Intute, bananas were first introduced into England in 1633 and regular large-scale shipments regular shipments began to arrive in 1884.
[Intute is a consortium of of the universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, Oxford, Manchester, Heriot-Watt, and Manchester Metropolitan University.]
The first refridgerated shipments arrrived in 1902 and now bananas have usurped apples and pears in terms of the speed of their sales growth. There is a tangled history of exploitation in the story of bananas, still going on today. I’ll post another link when I have researched it a bit more.
and now I fancy eating a banana!
I have always wondered who first came up with the brilliant invention of “Banana Custard” one of my favourite puddings. Although I am not sure many people actually like it!
I am one of the minority who do not like bananas. In fact I am waiting for medical science to catch up and recognize that they are hazardous to health…
Someone told me recently, that science deemed the banana as the perfect food for humans. Meaning, it holds every vital nutritional element that humans need for survival.
I think Darwin would have sent that scientist flowers….
Science and my taste buds are at odds at the moment. I am giving science time to catch up…