In 1995 Safeway were ahead of the supermarket pack in launching a loyalty card scheme (beaten to the punch only by Tesco), under the banner of ABC. ABC stood for "Added Bonus Card", but it also suggested simplicity and everything happening in a perfect little sequence. Having one of these in your pocket entitled you to a range of goodies, from in-store discounts to family days out, and naturally we had a Little Harry ad to go along with it. This one differed from the last two Harry ads we looked at, in that it didn't tell the story of a single shopping trip, but was instead comprised of three smaller vignettes designed to give you an idea of the various different applications of the ABC card.
This ad always stood out to me as one of the most memorable of the Little Harry series, on account of the surprisingly vicious shade thrown at Tots TV, a contemporary preschool show on CITV about a trio of puppets named Tilly, Tom and Tiny. A VHS tape containing a collection of their adventures is posited here as a blatantly naff selection next to a sponge cake in the shape of Mr Blobby, one of the reigning champions of 1990s UK zeitgeist. Harry's audacity in looking his mother's gift horse in the mouth had him seeming like quite the subversive soul at the time. A running theme throughout these three vignettes involves Harry one-upping the adults around him with his more discerning sensibilities, further playing on the tension between his deceptively ickle exterior and his acerbic inner monologuing. Being a toddler didn't mean that he was thrilled about being stuck with something as wretchedly unhip as Tots TV when there was discounted Mr Blobby merchandising up for grabs. Obviously the viewer was expected to sympathise with his preference, for if the British public (at least the portion of it that bought CD singles) had chosen Mr Blobby over teen heartthrobs Take That in a recent popularity contest, then what chance did those unassuming puppets have?
I might be talking out of turn here, but I get the impression that Tots TV isn't massively well-remembered nowadays, in spite of its tremendously infectuous theme song. In fact, that entire era of preschool television (the gulf between the demise of Rainbow and the dawn of the Teletubbies and the Tweenies) seems sadly neglected in terms of nostalgia. Nevertheless, could we argue that time has ultimately been kinder to Tilly, Tom and Tiny (even with their secret cottage having been torn down in 2021)? The Mr Blobby phenomenon that ate the UK's brains in the 90s is something that people tend to look back on with quite a bit of leery bemusement, wondering how kids were expected to be anything other than utterly terrified of the character, let alone want to consume anything in his likeness. Personally, I don't feel overly qualified to comment, since I was seldom more than innocent bystander in that whole affair. Somehow or other I never watched Noel's House Party, the program where he originated, and I didn't learn of his proper context - that he was initially conceived as a parody of a children's character, hence his somewhat off-kilter aura, and the feature of a recurring sketch where he was unleashed on unsuspecting celebrities - until long after the fact. I was familiar with Blobby to the extent that he was inescapable back then, but I had very little first-hand experience with the hulking pink demon. Still, I think it's a safe bet that the Tots were always the more sophisticated of the two choices. What says more about the battle for culture lost than a wholesome videotape about three puppets and their lovely donkey being passed over for something as crude and unnourishing as a cake shaped like the creepy humanoid with the Pepto Bismol colour scheme?
The second vignette revolves around an agreeable bit of role reversal, with Harry and his father leafing through the ABC catalogue in the manner of a bedtime story, but with Harry doing all the reading while his father can barely keep his eyes open. Harry wants them to redeem their points on a family cinema ticket, but objects to his parents' practice of tongue-kissing in the back row, which he claims is prohibited by ABC's regulations. The humor lies somewhere between Harry's efforts to usurp the position of parental authority, by insisting that the adults keep their pesky hormones in check, and his guarded awareness of said hormones in the first place.
In the final skit, Harry is addressed as an adult (albeit facetiously) by the Safeway cashier who applies a £8.00 discount to his family's shopping and honors him by letting him hold the prestigious ABC card. Even then, he finds ample room for improvement in the adult establishment, handing the card back and suggesting that they produce one containing the whole alphabet (of course, juxtaposed with the cheeky grin Hanford is exhibiting, Harry comes off as being a mite facetious himself). Ever the avatar for the viewer's inner child, he reminds us that it's good and healthy to have copious amounts of childhood fancy mixed in with our adult discernment.
And yes, if the "C" in ABC stood for "card", then calling it an ABC card was a classic example of RAS syndrome.
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