The 1970s Supermarket at Christmas

The 1970s was the decade when everything changed, from music to fashion, and especially how we shopped and what we ate during the festive season. In The 1970s Supermarket at Christmas we reveal the Christmas shopping revolution that took place across the decade in British supermarkets, with heaps of artificial trees and plastic tinsel going on sale, a rise in booze aisles filled with festive favourites like sherry, and new freezer stores packed with frozen sausage rolls and Bernard Matthews turkey roasts.

The festivities kick off with a peek into the 1970s Christmas party and we tell the story of how ready-to-bake pastry transformed Christmas finger food.  We reveal the alcoholic drinks that got everyone in the festive spirit – from snowball cocktails through to long forgotten giant cans of Watney’s Party 7.

We tell the story of how supermarkets took on retail goliaths Woolworths when they started to sell their own Christmas decorations, how Co-op was the king of Christmas supermarkets and how the power black outs of the early 1970s almost cancelled Christmas altogether.

The origins of the iconic Christmas stocking filler, Terry’s Chocolate Orange, are unwrapped and we expose the short-lived fate of the Terry’s Chocolate Lemon, launched in 1979.

In the kitchen, chef Rustie Lee rustles up vol-au-vents, Brussels pate and tries out Bird’s Trifle kit, whilst, in the lab, Dr Chris Clarke, finds out why the cheesy filling inside a cheese football snack doesn’t go off, how the gooey centre of an After Eight mint is created and answers the ultimate question – why do sprouts make you fart?