Little produces such nostalgia as fondly remembered processed foodstuffs it seems. I added this packaging box to my small collection a while ago, and it would seem to date from the late Fifties or early Sixties.
McVitie & Price are still making biscuits of course, and have been doing since the firm was founded in Edinburgh back in 1830. We always used to have a small cheer when we passed their Manchester factory (which opened in 1917) when driving over into the city (it’s still going despite having to shut for a time after the floods a couple of years ago.)
But like anything else, brands come and go. I thought I was probably the only one who would wonder what happened to the Royal Scot, which was seemingly phased out in the late 1970s. Far from it; there is an active Facebook site devoted to having the name brought back, and even one of those Government petitions (which was rejected as they are not able to respond to matters outside their responsibility!)
I do remember that they were my younger brother’s favourite and he was clearly not alone.
The tartan pattern on the box end plays on both the firm’s Scottish heritage and the brand name, although they gave up making biscuits in Scotland as long ago as 1969 (which seems a strange move as the country is known for biscuity products.)
The packaging is also designed to be used as a display box by cutting through the dotted line, though you wonder whether this risked slicing the packets inside.
I couldn’t work out how the box had survived in secondary use for so long, it’s not especially big (holding just 16 size 3 packets, at 11d each) or strong. But for someone it just fitted a lampshade, according to the writing on the top, so it probably got shoved to the back of a wardrobe and then forgotten about until the house clearers moved in recently. Luckily it escaped the dreaded paper recycler.
According to one of the biscuit blogs out there, M&P have occasionally brought back the biscuit, but only in one of those assortment tins, and apparently it tastes nothing like the original. Be warned!
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