Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Prince William on the front lawn of Government House Auckland during the royal tour of New Zealand in 1983. In 1993, the iconic Buzzy Bee toy was added to the Consumers Price Index. Photo / NZ Woman's Weekly
Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Prince William on the front lawn of Government House Auckland during the royal tour of New Zealand in 1983. In 1993, the iconic Buzzy Bee toy was added to the Consumers Price Index. Photo / NZ Woman's Weekly
There was a time when a teddy bear cost more than getting a filling at the dentist, when more people ate sheep’s tongue than chicken, and when alcohol was considered a luxury.
The one way we can track our changing tastes and fashions as a country is the target="_blank">Consumers Price Index (CPI). Yes, that dataset that has dominated headlines the past year alongside stories of cost-of-living doom and gloom.
We have all had enough of inflation – but buried in the inflation data are virtual time capsules that can transport us to different eras where we led completely different lives.
The CPI has been around for more than 100 years. Stats NZ uses it to track the changes in the prices we pay for goods and services, and produces an overall average figure, known as inflation.
You may have heard people talk about the CPI “basket”. This is not an actual basket, but a reference to a collection of hundreds of goods and services Stats NZ reviews on a three-year cycle.
The basket includes the products and services we as consumers spend most of our money on. In 1955, one of the earliest years where records are available, it also included items that are no longer common purchases for households, such as coal and coke fuel; men’s wool bathing shorts and women’s corsets; and tram fares, telegrams and gramophone records.
The "church tram" to Castlecliff in 1950, surrounded by sheep. Photo / Graham Stewart
So, the basket is a good representation of not only household staples in our lives at certain points throughout history, but of the one-hit-wonder fads (think waterbeds) that hit the market with a bang or the longer-lasting products that span generations (think corsets).
Nicola Growden, Stats NZ’s senior manager of prices, economic and environmental insights, says the CPI basket reflects what people are spending their money on at a certain point in time.
“I was a child growing up in the ‘80s and I recall my parents had a waterbed so it very much does reflect at the time that’s what people were purchasing. It was the thing to have back in the day and you’ll see that very quickly that obviously shifted,” Growden said.
“They came back out again in the ‘90s. What was popular in one decade is not the next decade.”
Meat, three veg and a lot of alcohol
Back in the 1950s, the options for food were far more limited than they are today. Most dinners were made up of meat and three veg. Chicken was considered a luxury and not even included in the index. Instead, households were buying mutton and corned silverside, pork, beef and tripe, and eating far more meat than we do today.
A store sign in 2008 advertising cut-price RTDs. Photo / Supplied
Eventually, our diets diversified. Perhaps a sign of the times, avocado and energy drinks were added to the basket in the ‘90s as the lunchtime staple for many, luncheon meat, was exiled.
Kiwis spend a lot on alcohol. In fact, the 2020 CPI showed households were spending more on booze (4.28 per cent) than fruit and vegetables (2.37 per cent). Our tastes for alcohol have wavered over the years: wine coolers - a drink of wine and fruit juice - were in vogue only briefly in the mid-to-late ‘80s, then we fell in love with RTDs and then the likes of brandy to wine. But the alcoholic drink that has stood the test of time and remained in the index since 1950s is good old beer.
When a teddy cost more than the dentist
If we were back in the ‘50s, buying a teddy bear would cost about $400 in today’s prices, less than a trip to the dentist for a filling back then.
In 1993, iconic New Zealand toy the Buzzy Bee was added to the index and remained there until 2008, perhaps thanks to one of the original influencers of our generation, an infant Prince William.
Prince William plays with a Buzzy Bee on the lawn of Auckland's Government House during a 1983 tour to New Zealand with his parents. In 1993, the toy was added to the Consumers Price Index. Photo / NZ Herald
According to Stats NZ and the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, the Buzzy Bee had shot to international attention during the April 1983 royal tour of Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Prince William. Images showing baby William playing with a Buzzy Bee on the lawn at Auckland’s Government House were transmitted around the world and helped cement the toy as a Kiwi staple.
Technology: Black, white and bulky
One way to track the changing preferences of New Zealand households in the face of new products is with the inclusion and exclusion of different technologies from the basket over time. Personal computers debuted in the CPI in the 1980s and internet services were added in the ‘90s.
By 2010, laptops, cellphones, tablets and e-books were in vogue, while audio cassettes and satellite navigation systems were out.
Televisions have been a part of New Zealanders’ lives for the past five decades and have been tracked in the CPI for most of that time. Television sets were added to the basket in 1966, six years after the first television broadcast in New Zealand.
Since then, New Zealanders have gone from watching black and white screens that cost about $4500 in today’s terms according to Stats NZ, to a range of free-to-air and pay programmes on flat-screen colour televisions.
Julia Gabel is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on data journalism. She joined the Herald in 2020.
