Little Harry's Safeway adventures continued in an ad (circa 1995) which saw the drolly articulate tyke and his mother enjoying a grand day out in one of the chain's newly-opened superstores, the location of which varied according to which part of the UK you were watching it from. The narration in the embedded YouTube upload gives the shout-out to a Wolverhampton store set to open its doors that August, although the all-purpose footage was adapted to reference a variety of stores in different regions. TV Ark has an upload of a variant promoting a couple of stores in Dumbarton and Glenrothes. Wow, Harry and his mother certainly got around.
The Harry campaign was designed to cement Safeway's reputation as a particularly appealing option for parents accustomed to shopping with small children, by emphasising the various perks they had implemented to make the experience more straightforward (including the "VIP" parent and child parking right beside the entrance). But by aligning the viewer's perspective with that of a toddler coming to grips with the vast world and all of its possibilities, at a time when even something as mundane as pushing a trolley around a stack of groceries seemed novel and exhilarating, it had the additional effect of making setting foot in one of their stores seem like a great and wholesome adventure. Safeway were pushing themselves as the supermarket chain that met all of your needs under one roof, to the point that you, like Harry, were dwarfed by its scope (albeit not to the same inhibiting extent where the wide aisles impeded his ability to interact with the items on the shelves). Harry's remark on assessing the magnitude of the venue - "I hope you cancelled the milk" - has a cunning double meaning, alluding hyperbolically to the possibility that they could be navigating its wares for days, while implicitly suggesting that having milk delivered to your door was a redundant service when you might as well pick it up at Safeway.
Harry's charm as an advertising character lay in his being both a child and an adult at once, the delightfully incongruous combination of Hanford's pint-sized form with Clunes' ultra-dry delivery. Innocence by way of sardonicism, he became the avatar for the inner child of every Safeway consumer whose gut reaction, on seeing balloons handed out, was to anticipate that some kind of party should follow. As it turns out, Safeway had two different parties (of sorts) to offer inside of its stores. One was the more subdued party targetted at adult patrons, a celebration of service and expansive convenience comprised of petrol stations, coffee shops, dry cleaning and all the things that you're expected to embrace as a grown-up. The second was located in the soft play area that serves as the ad's punchline, with the revelation that these Safeway superstores came with a crèche where you could dump the kids, the ultimate dream of any parent who didn't want to have to deal with a fussing toddler and a trolley full of dried penne and tinned peaches at the same time. Harry speaks so deftly to the adults who are still kids at heart that it's actually a little heart-rending, seeing him gazing longingly at the tots on the other side of the glass, unable to access this particular Safeway perk on account of his mum yanking him in another direction. He asks her not to take it the wrong way, but he'd rather stay in the crèche next time, with his repeated unanswered imploring leaving doubts as to whether it's going to happen. He articulates the desires of the wistful adult viewership more than their hyperactive children. Because admit it, no matter what your age, there is a very visceral part of you that likewise envies those kids, as you find yourself yearning for a simpler time when you could bounce relentlessly off of soft surfaces while someone else took care of your material needs. Alas, dry cleaning is where you're at now. You've got to be satisfied with the excitement in that.
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