More Comping Nostalgia

Last week's  post on my eighth Grape Vine birthday  had a quick look at some of the ways comping has changed over the last eight years and lots of you emailed with your own memories of how it had changed, so I thought a bit more nostalgia would be welcome.

When we're out hunting for competitions, the changes in the way we shop are very noticeable, as are the shops that are most likely to have competitions. Gone - or poised to go - are Kwik Save (altohugh it's starting to reappear as part of the Costcutter group), Ottakars, Somerfield, Safeway, JJB, Virgin Megastores, HMV, Going Places and Fopp, all of whom had competitions listed in the March 2005 issue. Gone too are the film processing envelopes, which used to often have entry forms printed on them. In their place, we often find them on ink cartridge and phone recycling envelopes.

Supermarkets often had display stands inside the door with entry forms for anything up to a dozen different competitions on them. In store magazines would contain yet more entry forms. Nowadays there are seldom any separate forms in supermarkets - most of the competitions are in the store's magazines, but very few of them ever use an entry form - entries are online or by text and just occasionally by postcard. Just think how much less we  spend on postage, and how much less waste paper our "comping corners" (You DO have a comping corner, don't you? Or is that just me?) fill up with!

There still ARE entry forms around - clothes shops and furniture stores are prime hunting grounds for them, and Morrisons  and Asda both still produce a few, but not in the huge numbers  of the "olden days". And don't forget that I'm only talking about eight years ago, not even the last century!