Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising

Museum London, United Kingdom

A fascinating journey into the world of brands, consumer products and their packaging, from the Victorian era to the present day. In the famous district of Notting Hill, a few steps from Portobello Road, over 20,000 original objects collected over about fifty years by Robert Opie, a scholar of English consumerism.

The collection illustrates the history of the exhibited brands and the history of their consumers: how brands have evolved through the creative use of packaging and advertising, and how society has changed following the introduction and daily use of goods of mass consumption belonging to these brands. The museum, small and "condensed", is self-guided, i.e. you visit on your own. Those who want to make the most of their visit can use the worksheets available free of charge. Each sheet is oriented towards a particular subject and contains a series of questions to be answered as you tour the museum. The visit takes place along the Time Tunnel, a "gallery of time" of about two centuries made up of several corridors, each dedicated to a decade. Every aisle is crammed with bottles, cans, jars, flasks, tin and cardboard boxes, paper wrappers, packets, trays, labels, flyers and advertising signs for consumer goods, mainly British and American brands.