Homeowner digs up practically 50-year-old packet of crisps in his yard
- Cenk Albayrak-Touye, 28, unearthed the packet while re-turfing his lawn
- The snack, which was remarkably intact, was dated October 31, 1975
- ‘It was like a time capsule,’ he said. ‘It was like it had been put there yesterday’
A Quavers crisp packet from almost half a century ago has been dug up accidentally by a man in his back garden.
Cenk Albayrak-Touye unearthed the remarkably intact – watertight, with no holes at all – snack in Poole, Dorset, and they are dated October 31, 1975.
The 28-year-old also found an old beer bottle but said it was the yellow packaging that first caught his eye, before confirming it was the ‘curly potato puffs’ after washing it clean.
‘I was digging up the garden to re-turf the lawn and started finding all this rubbish,’ he said. ‘It was like a time capsule.
‘I saw this yellow packet covered in dirt and I hosed it down to find it completely intact. It was like it had been put there yesterday.
Cenk Albayrak-Touye, 28, unearthed a Quavers packet from almost half a century ago while re-turfing his lawn
The snack, which was remarkably intact, was dated October 31, 1975, and featured the face of former Olympian David Hemery as part of a competition at the time
‘It had water in it from where I hosed it and it was absolutely watertight still.
‘As cool as it is to find these things it is also pretty scary that it’s been under the ground for nearly double my lifetime and it’s just sitting there completely intact.’
The empty Quavers packet found by Cenk, that was made by British firm Smiths, had the face of former GB Olympic athlete David Hemery on.
The packet comes from an old competition where people who wanted to win a brand new board game called Sporting Supersix had to collect the faces of six British sport stars from the 1970s on the front of their packets.
The others were footballer Alan Ball, golfer Peter Oosterhuis, showjumper Anne Moore, cricketer Tony Greig and tennis player Roger Taylor.
Once they had all six, customers had to send off 15p to receive the board game.
The crisp packet came from a time when Labour’s Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister, Derby County won English football’s First Division and The Bay City Rollers had the best-selling single of the year with Bye Bye Baby.
Since 1997 Quavers have been produced by Walkers.
Cenk, a landscape photographer, also found an old beer bottle from Dorchester brewery Eldridge Pope, which closed in 2003, in his garden.
Walkers is now owned by PepsiCo, and a spokesperson from the company told the BBC: ‘We recognise that litter is a huge problem and we want to play a role in addressing this challenge.
‘That’s why we’ve been supporting the Great British Spring Clean for the past six years, with our teams joining efforts to clean up local communities.
‘We’re also continuing to invest heavily to make our packaging more easily recyclable, as well as reducing the plastic packaging we use.’
