Kiwiana is changing for the younger generation. Photo/File
Kiwiana is changing for the younger generation. Photo/File
We live in a changing world in which even icons change. I know this because there has been another study.
Yes, another study! This one was closer to home; conducted by Auckland University of Technology, its target of study was the changing face of Kiwiana.
You're probably like me inthat your first thoughts are of Buzzy Bees, Jandals, All Blacks and hokey pokey ice cream. Perhaps we could add kiwifruit, the corner dairy and fish and chips on the beach. Gumboots, Swanndris, sheepdogs, kiwi and pavlova? Marmite? Pikelets? Edmonds baking powder?
Oh, they're flooding back now: L&P, paua, pohutukawa, ginger crunch, Anzac biscuits, Four Square.
We could also add the reality of cold, damp, uninsulated homes. The bedroom I slept in as a child had walls of wallpaper, scrim and boards. My poster of Wilson Whineray's All Blacks cheered it up a little though it tended to billow during a stiff southerly.
Yes, this issue is at last being attended to but such homes still exist and the fact that so many of us grew up in them (or flatted in them during university days) makes them (unfortunately) iconic.
There are issues with some of the more traditional icons. For example, where are Buzzy Bees made these days? China. Do you remember Chinese gooseberries? And debate with Australia over the origins of pavlova will continue and probably run into extra time.
Some of these icons also exist in other cultures, of course; it's just our nomenclature which is Kiwi. Elsewhere in the world a dairy is a convenience store, corner shop or mixed business. Jandals are flip flops, thongs or, in Hawaii, slippers.
But the new study says all this is changing. Some of the classics will fade into oblivion but new ones will emerge to replace them thanks to the views of a younger generation.
The Kiwi-as dairy is no longer an attractive business proposition so could well fade from the scene. In future the pies, bread, milk and lollies might have to come from the service station or supermarket as long hours, low profit margins and increasing danger of robberies take their toll.
A big new contender is Māori culture and this is a positive development except when it sinks to the depths of plastic tiki, whare snowglobes and Māori warrior tea towels.
The top contenders list makes interesting reading: silver fern (98 per cent); Māori culture (94.4 per cent); Bluff oysters (80.2 per cent); New Zealand wine (77.3 per cent); Auckland Sky Tower (67.4 per cent); flat white coffee (60.7 per cent).
While I feel the Auckland Sky Tower could find a home inside a snowglobe, I'm encouraged that the younger generation is now seeing our food and wine as important.
I trust that part of the reason Bluff oysters make such an impact is that the presentation of them is better now than it was in my scrim bedroom days. In those days they were prised from their shells then presented as an amorphous mass of grey slime in a pottle. More accurate descriptions are not suitable for a family newspaper.
Who would have believed that flat white coffee would make it onto the list! It's a little strange as a Kiwiana icon but it's a giant step forward from the teaspoon of instant so many of us grew up with.
Wyn Drabble
Maybe you even remember coffee and chicory essence. At the time I never actually knew what chicory was but always felt that, whatever it was, it had no place in coffee.
