Car window stickers

Well, this has to be one of our most unusual acquisitions. Richard spotted a collection of car window stickers – I’m sure there’s a noun for that – and secured it for the Archive. We now have a box of hundreds (probably thousands!) of stickers, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s.

By ‘sticker’, I mean soft plastic prints which stuck to the inside of the windows of a car without needing any adhesive. You’ve probably got one in your car, and probably didn’t even know it. For example, up until recently, every car had to display a tax disc, and so advertisers saw opportunities in promoting their brand on tax disc holders. This was usually the garage that had sold the car, and for them gave free and long-term advertising. Many (older) cars continue to display the tax disc holder even though it no longer shows a disc.

Towns got in on the act too. Just about every town in the country would have produced car stickers, sometimes just simply giving the name of the town, and where space permitted, there’d be a slogan too. This is very much of its time – in the post-war years, more and more people were affording cars and would go out for a spin at the weekends. As they took in more and more towns, as tourists they would want to record their expeditions – what better than a car sticker?

What piqued Richard’s memory were the triangular stickers, which I think were very popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Richard tells me that some car owners were so enthusiastic in collecting these and displaying them that their vision through the glass was obscured, and the police would stop motorists offending in this way.

We need someone to help us to catalogue and preserve this collection. The stickers have all stuck together and need to be gently prised apart. Most are in good condition, but a few are losing their inking. The job is to separate them, identify them, catalogue them and preserve them for posterity. If this is for you, get in touch on volunteering@richardrobertsarchive.org.uk