Museum of Brands

Museums, History Ladbroke Grove
3 out of 5 stars
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(12user reviews)
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Venue says 'Time Out 50: 50 Years, 50 Covers' – an exhibition of Time Out cover designs dating back to 1968. Open September 12 until March 3.

Roll up, roll up! The Museum of Brands has found itself a glam new home; still in Notting Hill but now with extra added space for its seemingly endless collection of wrappers, posters, toys, boxes and general collectibles. The main part of the display is the ‘time tunnel’, a maze of dark cabinets that are stuffed with colourful curios arranged in date order. With the arrival of each new decade an information panel helps to put the changing designs and new fashions into context. A highlight – literally light thanks to a sunny, south-facing gallery room – is a sort of shrine to a few particularly recognisable brands. One cabinet holds every iteration of can and bottle produced by Guinness, another is packed with cereal boxes from Kellogg’s, even Brasso gets its moment to , *ahem*, shine. This is a museum that will appeal to any lover of stuff, a nostalgia-stuffed tribute to the many, many things we buy.

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Museum of Brands says
The Museum of Brands is the world’s only museum dedicated to celebrating how well loved, memorable brands have evolved through time. The exhibits explore how people and their lives have been shaped by the products and brands around them, and vice versa.
Check our website for what's on.
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Venue name: Museum of Brands
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Address: 111-117 Lancaster Road
Lonsdale Rd
London
W11 1QT
Opening hours: Mon to Sat: 10am to 6pm, Sun and Bank Holidays: 11am to 5pm
Transport: Tube: Ladbroke Grove
Price: £9 adults, £7 concs, £5 children (7-16), free under-7s, £24 family (2 adults + up to 5 children), groups 10% discount to groups of 10 or more (pre-booking required)
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  • Things to do

    Time Out 50: 50 Years, 50 Covers

    You won’t believe it, but Time Out is 50 this year. Since our pocket-sized first issue in 1968, we’ve published almost 2,500 magazines in London and many more in other great cities around the world. Now, to celebrate our big birthday, we’ve teamed up...

    Exhibitions Until Sunday March 3 2019

Average User Rating

4.2 / 5

Rating Breakdown

  • 5 star:4
  • 4 star:6
  • 3 star:2
  • 2 star:0
  • 1 star:0
LiveReviews|12
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Tastemaker

I recently visited the Museum of Brands to see the launch of the TimeOut 50 exhibition and I was pleasantly surprised. The museum itself features artefacts from the Victorian period to modern day and details how the use of brands has changed over the years. This is not only a trip down memory lane, it is also show, alarmingly, how much brand power now shapes our lives and culture. This museum is well worth a visit if you are in the area.

tastemaker

This is such a quirky place, which allows visitors to take a trip down memory lane to see the brands that shaped their childhoods and reflect on the role of propaganda and advertising in our changing society. It’s a particularly good shout for a rainy afternoon with visiting parentals.

I was also recently lucky enough to nab an invite to the launch of the “TimeOut 50: 50 Years, 50 Covers” exhibition, which is being shown here until March 3, 2019.

This exhibition was a worthy tribute to a diverse and often groundbreaking body of work spanning 50 years.

When lined up from cover to cover, you can see that TimeOut is way more than a city guide, taking risks with content (like choosing to give Winston Churchill the other two-fingered salute on his 100th anniversary), design (like the striking green minimalistic “Jealousy” cover) and even the rebellious use of full stops in headlines.

This is certainly the highlight of the Museum, and I promise that wasn’t just the @ginmare speaking! Sadly the delicious gin cocktails aren’t available everyday but this special exhibition is well worth a look anyway.

Tastemaker

What a strange museum...

I loved all the stuff displayed there. It was informative to see the changes in communication of several brands, fun to take a trip down memory lane and eye-opening to match the comms with the different eras.


But it is all displayed in such a weird way. The place itself is dark, small and rather unwelcoming. The objects are crammed into tiny, small shelves. And the panels sometimes lack in useful background info.


In the end, it feels more like the collection of marketing geek rather than a museum in its own right.

Tastemaker

What a weird museum! It seems they managed to get really great material, but no curatorship! There is an overload of artefacts, but not really a point. Mass produced objects from Victorian times to current are presented in no real theme besides chronologic order; even the texts about each period seem quite pointless – just a list of events, but no real contextualization. Not only that, but some of texts about specific objects seem to have been printed ‘last minute’ in a home printer and part of the displays are just covered in black sheets, making the narrow corridors look even darker. It all ends up looking like a 6th grade school presentation (albeit with very cool content). There is a back room, with a ‘consumer timeline’ and some brands’ histories that give the appearance of being better presented, but besides the Johnny Walker display – one of the museum sponsors – again, not any kind of reference or context. And all that for the ‘super fair’ price of £9!

Tastemaker

Love this place. It's pretty small but it is absolutely packed with, well, packaging. It's ability to move you from time period to time period solely through (mostly) consumer packaging is uncanny. Changes in materials, complexity and colours help move you forward in time but also the brands changing style adds an elemental of the social world too. It helps emphasise quite how ubiquitous the dominant brands are, and have been, but even corporate greyness doesn't dull the exhibit. It's probably not for everyone but it's different, educational and quite a walk down memory lane.


While we quite rightly remember & preserve so much of our history and heritage around us in society, brands and packaging could so easily be forgotten and lost. This museum fills that role of archiving and presenting our collective history of so much that we live around, which is also a very significant part of our cultural life. A wonderful trip down memory lane!


Lovely place to browse, fun gifts and an amazing secret garden, to sit and drink your coffee in.

Tastemaker

Throw a stick in London and you’re guaranteed to hit one of three things; a school-group of European teenagers, an over-priced & barely-used mansion or a museum. There are over 200 museums in London and although your first thoughts are probably of the big hitters – the Imperial War, the Natural History, the British, the V&A – you should know that there are some smaller ones that are absolutely lovely and well worth a visit.


The Museum of Brands is one such gem and re-opened recently in its spanking new and rather swish Notting Hill location, it’s definitely worthy of your time & attention once you’re all shopped out at nearby Portobello Road. It’s not huge so it won’t take you more than a couple of hours to have a slow meander through the decades of some of the world’s largest and most well know companies as well as a visit to the gift shop where you can stock up on amazing gifts for the retro lover in your life (consider this place well & truly on my Christmas shopping hit list), a spot of tea & cake in the bright, clean, understated café and a stroll through the gorgeous gardens outside.


There are over 10’000 different items on display, some from as far back as the 1800’s and if you’ve ever wondered what your eyeliner looked like in the ‘20’s, your washing up liquid in the ‘50’s or your favourite Cadbury’s treats in the ‘80’s, you’ll find your answers here. You may also find yourself gently smirking at the display of TV sets through the years but also wistfully envious of the fact they were Kardashian free, the lucky so and so’s.


Reasonably priced with £7.50 being the most expensive ticket and open Tuesday-Sunday, it’s the ideal spot to take yourself or anyone you know with an interest in brands, marketing and how both have changed so dramatically through the years; you’ll giggle, you’ll get nostalgic and you’ll lose count of the number of times you’ll say, ‘oh do you remember…?’ but you’ll be glad you went to see one of the smaller siblings of the giants in London’s museum landscape.

Tastemaker

Such an interesting museum! Although there isn't much to read in terms of facts (although there is some era related boards as you go around) there is sooo much packaging from over the last century which is just amazing to see. Great for all ages and reasonably priced!


What a lovely little museum! Being so small, it is absolutely cluttered with stacks of objects on display. Lots and lots of different brand names of food packaging, toys and pictures. Starting off in Victorian times to recent years, the museum aims not only to bring you back to childhood, but also to provide context and story across the ages up until the present day on the evolution of consumerism. Quite unknown but still it gets quite busy so I would recommend visiting out of peak hours.