Food History

I love the different directions food history can take me. Today’s direction is pure and unadulterated happiness, for instance. My niece is taking me to the Royal Melbourne Show. I know there’s a focus on some regional Victorian food (mostly from the Yarra Valley and the Grampians) but there’s also the various food competitions to suss out. I doubt I’ll be as lucky as I was at the Canberra Show, where I got to taste the best mead I’ve ever come across (it’s one thing being a food historian in a town of 350,000 and another entirely being one visiting a city of many million) but I can check out cake categories and find out just what traditions are being maintained by the Show competitions. I can also do the tasting trail: this is one of the great food cities in the world, and it was inevitable that tasting was going to be part of the event. I might blog about it tomorrow. Or I might be too exhausted.

My post today is really about the homework I did last night, in preparation for today. I checked out the exhibitors and pavilions to find out which ones I shouldn’t miss. I also checked out the showbags.

While I was checking out the showbags, Mum and I had our usual discussion. We may have had this little exchange many times, but it never ceases to fascinate. Every year (whether I get to an agricultural show or not) we talk about cahnges in showbags. Every year I add a little to my knowledge of that particular cultural dynamic over time.

In the 1940s, at the Royal Melbourne Show, showbags were free. They were sample bags and introduced kids to all sorts of foodstuff, basically. These days the cheapest showbag is $5 and the most expensive $999. The ‘best value’ $5 showbag is several rolled into one and mainly sweets (lollies for you US readers). They’re marginally cheaper than the same bought in a supermarket on sale. The joy for modern children is that they’re in a pretty platic showbag – the joy for children 65 years ago was not knowing what the would find in the paper bag. (OK, so it’s more complicated than that – but that illuminates the basic cultural dynamic and progression, at least.)

Regulations now say that the true value of the bag has to be stated and last night I checked out the contents lists for the 340 showbags that will be on sale today (the Showbag Pavilion is not a good place for that kind of research as it’s forever massing with hoardes of kids chasing their showbag dreams and the online showbag listing has a search function). Producers always estimate the worth at the expensive end of things and then tell you how very much you’re saving. The amount they claim depends very much on the type of showbag.

There are some almost-genuine sample bags around. They’re produced by magazines. You get a nice bag (not plastic – I use an old magazine tote to carry teaching equipment) and you get a few old magazines, one recent one and a bunch of samples of whatever cosmetics or snack food are currently undergoing a massive marketing push. It’s a very good way of finding out who’s marketing what to a particular target audience. These bags seem to have replaced my old favourite, which were full of old comics. I do miss the Phantom showbag, with its mysterious batch of back isses.

There are a bunch of promotional showbags, and some silly ones (I once bought a friend one full of plastic blow-up furniture and was amused to find it’s still for sale this year – and then there’s the “Don’t Hassle the Hoff” bag, where you get everything you need to look like David Hasslehoff, including a wig).

The big change in showbags here, though, are the foodie ones. There is a whole new range of showbags with gourmet food at discounted prices. Honey and lavender and chutnies and spice blends. These are the ones my niece and I shall investigate in a couple of hours. I want to find out more.

I have watched showbags for many, many years. They’re one of the odd little cultural indices I keep an eye on to see how things are changing and where they change. They’re also immense fun.