CONSUMERISM

In Search of a Free Lunch

Are you a sucker for free gifts?

Philip Ogley
Ellemeno
Published in
4 min readSep 22, 2024

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(Image/Mike Biard/Wiki Comms)

I’m a sucker for free gifts. Always have been. Growing up with my gran in the late 70s, we spent hours cutting out coupons from magazines and newspapers. Sending them off and waiting three weeks for a (then) state-of-the-art Pyrex dish. By the time she died, her entire kitchen was a museum of 1970s mail-order ovenware.

My grandfather wasn’t much better. His vice was collecting cigar cards. He’d smoke like a trooper just to complete the set. Then send off for the free presentation pack into which you could stick the cards. I’ve still got them, and while many of the cards have become faded or unstuck, the twenty or so booklets on stamps, coins, countries, and trains are a poignant reminder of my grandfather’s obsession with free gifts.

Years later, even my father got in on the act.

If you lived in the UK in the 1980s, you might remember collecting tokens at gas stations that you could exchange for a variety of household items. He always went for the glasses, and as he drove (and drank) a lot in those days it didn’t take long for our house to become a shrine to Texaco tumblers, high-balls, and champagne flutes.

Fast forward thirty years and I seem to have inherited my ancestors’ penchant for gimmicks…

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