THE poundshop may soon be a thing of the past, as few items still cost £1. Britons are predictably upset, but the truth is they were always bollocks. Here’s why.
The maths doesn’t work
Not every product retails for exactly £1. So even if some are sold at a slight loss, many will have the price hiked slightly to make them a nice round £1. You could have a shop called ‘Stuff Sold For What It’s Actually Worth’ but that doesn’t sound like a bargain to morons.
It helps if you have stunted tastes
Do you eat a monotonous diet of the same famous-brand products every day? If so, Poundland et al are for you. Fancy a dinner of Heinz cream of chicken soup, Fray Bentos beef and onion pie, and that rarest of treats, a Cadbury Wispa? Thanks to poundshops you can eat like an unadventurous pensioner who’s just glad rationing is over.
Disappointing toys
Poundshops sell ultra-cheap unlicensed Chinese knock-offs, eg. superhero action figures called ‘Metal Suit Jet Hero’, ‘Incredible Green Man’ and ‘Scarlet Magician’. They’ll have huge holes in them from the moulding process, a tendency for limbs to fall off, and deformed faces that will either give kids nightmares or lead to a career in reconstructive plastic surgery.
You gets what you pay for
A pack of 20 biros for £1 is superficially cheap, but not if they last three per cent as long as a pack of five normal ones for £1.50. Otherwise sane people are thrilled by poundshop deals, when they’d instantly realise Springsteen tickets on sale for £2.50 is a teensy bit too good to be true.
Seasonal crap
At Easter, Halloween and Christmas the poundshops declare war on the environment. Suddenly they’re full of one-use plastic shite like Easter bunny door ornaments, nylon spider’s web, a talking Rudolph reminiscent of The Exorcist, and so on. In the future, bands of cancer-ridden survivors will wander the scorched wastelands, ruing the day they ruined the Earth for a glow-in-the-dark six-inch skeleton for, you guessed it, £1.
Smug bargain hunters
Twats singing the praises of poundshops are pretty dull if you’re not obsessed with cheap ginger biscuits. Middle class ones slumming it are the worst because they act as if they’ve been on a massive, possibly dangerous, adventure. It’s worth remembering Dr Livingstone was famous for exploring the Nile, not getting 12 tins of Whiskas for 20p less than Asda.
