Category: Time

I have in my possession an old, yellowing tupperware container full of stickers. This is a collection of mine that started back when I was a child and continued up until my mid teens. Many (most!) other of my possessions from those days are long, long gone. But the sticker collection remains. For various reasons I was never able to discard it, and it lingered in the back of a closet even up until I left Australia.

It was then passed on to my brother, who himself kept it safe for many years. He ended up bringing it to America with him when he moved here and on my first trip to visit him in San Jose he returned it to me. What a reunion! Soon after it was placed back into deep storage, in our attic to be precise, but the other week I dug it out (if only to remind myself I still had it) and opened it for a look.

And what a trip down memory lane that was!

That’s a shot taken just now, with the stickers all over my desk (and on the drawer to the left) as I was scanning them. There are many hundreds, in all shapes, colours and sizes. I was particular about my collection, and happily took anything that could be ‘stuck’ (and hence was a ‘sticker’) including doubles. I have dozens of certain stickers.

Did I buy them? No, not at all. The very vast majority were free, collected either from trade shows (industry stickers), from shops (marketing stickers), from food or toy packaging (licensed stickers) or from clinics/hospitals/school (safety stickers).

In this lengthy post I’ll give a few examples of the many different stickers, with a focus on the more nostalgic variety. (Because of the way I manipulated the scan files, the sticker images in this post are not to scale.)

I have a great many souvenir stickers, from many classically Australian towns: Nyngan, Trangie, Bourke, Cobar (the copper city of the west!). I doubt I ever visited any of these, which means the stickers were given to me as a souvenir or I swapped them from someone else. The sticker shown on the left above – typical of many of these – includes instructions on the back which basically summarize to: “Stick this on something”! Amusingly, almost all these stickers include sheep in the coat-of-arms. I guess it’s true that sheep are everywhere in Australia 🙂

Radio stickers were commonly distributed in record shops. The idea was to put them on your bumper and possibly win a prize if your license plate was read on the air. I never did this (of course), and instead hoarded the stickers. I have stickers for about a dozen radio stations, including 2NUR, 2KO, JJJ (many varieties) and even a Queensland radio station! Where did I get that?

That’s one of three stickers of which I am even today quite proud of, since that’s for my uncle’s (Peter Sheely) surfboard company. Sheely stickers were one of the few I ever actually stuck on things (schoolbooks mostly) since I could use my contacts to get more 😉

I find the stickers with dates to be quite interesting. The oldest sticker I have seems to be the one advertising the 1977 tennis tournament, and the youngest seems to be from 1988 (when I was 16). Stickers can be educational as well: who knew that in 1979 Australia apparently had an argentine ant infestation? It’s a good thing Inspector Anteater was on the job!

Oh, and what the heck is this:

I doubt we went to this event, especially since I don’t know where Blacktown is. But mysteriously I have not one or two but three different stickers advertising it! That’s a mystery that will never be solved…

Safety stickers, like those above, were given out at school or (more commonly) at free clinics that were held at malls or sometimes libraries. The best way to teach a child safety is to give him a sticker I suppose. In those days I don’t recall people sticking stickers on shops or cars or street signs like some do today, so they seem to have been more commonly used for marketing.

We’ll call the above ‘brainwashing stickers’. I have a lot of these as well, including anti-littering, save-the-animals, save-the-water and (a whole bunch of) religions ‘I love being a christian’ stickers. For children in the 1970s and 1980s, much education was accomplished via the distribution of stickers!

Speaking of marketing, I’ve got a good selection of food promotional stickers all showing off the logos and design sense of 197X. I don’t think any advertising exec these days would ever use the word ‘peddler’ in his jingles, do you? The UFO’s sticker – for a type of snack chip product (think flavoured, shaped cheetos) makes me want to eat a bag right now!

Speaking of marketing, I have a few high quality ‘shop window’ vinyl stickers. I have absolutely no idea where I got them from, since we didn’t know anyone that owned a shop. They are all quite massive and don’t fit in the scanner. Here’s a classic:

That sticker has to be 25+ years old now, and I believe Chiko Roll still uses similar marketing today! Seeing this sticker, and posting the image, makes me want to eat a Chiko Roll for the first time in my life. Watch for that event during the Australia trip…

A couple of stickers for long-dead Newcastle restaurants. As a child I used to love going to The Beefeater since it seemed posh and special. I bet viewed through adult eyes it was a bit of a dirty very amateur theme restaurant 🙂

Smash Hits stickers! Yes, I kept everything. I wonder how many other unstuck Icehouse stickers exist in the world today?

On the subject of keeping everything, here are some true gems of the collection:

I’m pretty sure I nicked the above from a clothing store called ‘Best & Less’ when the employee wasn’t looking. I actually have three, in different amounts. It’s obviously designed for a store display, and is about 20 cm long. It’ll be handy if I ever have a sale!

The above somewhat boggles my mind. But hey, it’s a sticker!

The above was designed for a math contest that I entered (and actually won)! At the time I was probably more excited by the $50 prize, but now I’m happy I kept the sticker.

Of course with hundreds of stickers including many that are – let’s face it – borderline garbage, I had to have my favourites. And I did indeed, and they were almost all the licensed stickers. These came from cereal, bread or ice-cream boxes and the nature of their distribution meant I only have a rare few of each. Back in the day these were the creme-d-la-creme of my collection, so be impressed:

The smurf sticker (which is about 4 times the size of the Pac man one) probably came from a BP station and was free with a gas refill. I’d bet the Ms. Pac Man one came from a box of Pac Man ice-creams. Here’s another sticker that clearly came from an ice-cream box:

What a beauty! Looking through my collection photo stickers are very rare, but to have such a nice one from 1979 – and Star Trek no less – surely elevated this guy to highest echelons of my collection! It shared that spot with:

OMG! Nine different painted ewok stickers that were used to promote the Ewok Adventure film (in 1984). It’s a real mystery where these guys came from, but just look at them. This would be a real treasure for ewok collectors…

And then, Star Wars! These stickers are big (about 10 cm tall) and there were a lot of them for all the major characters. I have five different ones, many in duplicate, and am sure I once had many more because I stuck these on schoolbooks as well. Back in those days Star Wars was a mania of mine; I would have prized these. Incidentally I have no idea where they came from. I very much doubt they were food promotions due to their size. Anyone remember?

So what could have possibly exceeded Star Wars to 12-year-old me? Feast your eyes on this trio:

I’m sure we all remember fondly the Power Lords toy/comic line that was introduced by Revell in 1983 to compete against Masters Of The Universe? You don’t? Shame on you! As a kid I got some of the figures, and probably liked them enough, but I loved the stickers that came with them! Raygoth! Gripptogg! Such fantastic names. These stickers are big, colourful and I loved, loved, loved them. They were, quite simply, three of the best four stickers that I owned.

And this was the very best:

Lord in heaven a glitter skull sticker! This was the very pinnacle, the sticker so good it could never be stuck. This was also purchased by me, and I remember exactly where: Angus & Robertson in Garden City. I actually purchased two stickers that day, the other being a similarly glittery striking cobra design. That second sticker is no longer still with me, so I imagine it was stuck somewhere, but the skull is still waiting. This sticker has powerful nostalgic value for me these days, and still is in fantastic condition and tremendously glittery when viewed in the right light.

So where should I stick it?