Quinnsworth

Pigman II

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=gGBR0ybCNRg

DVD Special bonus feature : The Making of Quinnsworth AD
http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=llkFpUaHsig

Ruu_Old

Brilliant. Mr. Pratt went far from the Quinnsworth days.

Angus MacGyver

Many at last years prices!! Dont prices usually fall over time?

DMC

Not if you live in Ireland in the 1980's. Rampant inflation, how are ye!?

Kat1170

The infamous 'Yellow Pack'

Firetrap

Is it just me or do some of those toys seem to be very expensive? Such a shame Lord Vader didn't atomize Maurice Pratt while he was at it?

dazberry

haha you wouldn't have found that sort of stuff in our Quinnsworth - it would have all been nicked - you had to go somewhere exotic like Artane Castle to get that sh1t

Back after Return of the Jedi in 1983 - it was rumoured that Quinnsworth in Artane Castle had all the new Star Wars toys, and after much badgering the 'oul lad was enlisted to bring me over. Problem was the idiot couldn't find his way from one side of D5 to the other. After driving around lost for 15 minutes he got in a huff and drove back home

I actually bought one of those Scout Walkers (aka AT-ST)s in 1983 a year earlier, and since it took me months of jobs to get the money together - I can tell you that Maurice is lying thru' his crack - "last years price" wasn't £14.99 (it was about £13ish).

D.

/edit: Of course it wasn't one of the many at last years prices blah blah obviously. Having lived in the 80s, no wonder I'm so cynical :eek:

bullets

Ahh I remember Maurice!! Back in the days when Quinnsworth was Quinnsworth
and not taken over by Tesco.

A long long time ago in a Galaxy far.....Mmmm Sorry!...;)
Well a long long time ago I worked in the Toy Dept in Quinnsworth
The toy section was great! but at Christmas time it would drive you Mad
being a worker there.

Star wars toys were great but were too expensive at Quinsworth they
never seemed to reduce the price of their toys. Dunnes Stores however
sold Starwars and GI Joe toys and nearly a third the price of Quinsworth
toys. I remember getting star wars figures at £1.50 GI Joes at £2.99 and
some he-man like clones at £6.99

Star wars, centurions and Space Hulk were the most popular in my time
and in the 90's there came the Power rangers where there was only 1 white
power ranger in every box of 50 so it was madness trying to keep them

After Tesco took over the Toy depts started to merge with the hardware dept and slowly but surely the toy dept became POO! and is nearly extinct as
the hardware section has nearly stamped it out.

~B

Hagar

Qunnsworth? Pfft... Powers Supermarket FTW,
Not to mention H.Williams & Findlater's.

Firetrap

For years after Tesco bought up Quinnsworth, they still had the Quinnsworth sign up on the shop in Carlow!

rossie1977

Firetrap wrote: »

For years after Tesco bought up Quinnsworth, they still had the Quinnsworth sign up on the shop in Carlow!

Tesco didn't rename the rundown quinnsworth stores "Tesco" until the came up to scratch i.e. the same standard as UK tescos, for many that meant staying Quinnsworths for a few years as many were in really bads states of disrepair

the only quinnsworth store which did come up to scratch almost straight away was the store in athlone, which was the first old quinnsworth to be renamed tesco

L1011

Wasn't that because it was half-way rebuilt already?

The Maynooth branch was SHOCKING condition wise, it was a 1930s Rover dealership that'd been converted in to a supermarket by some local family (O'Briens) in the 70s or so and Quinnsworth bought it out in 1988 or so and left it the way it was when they got it... Was one of the more profitable stores, so Tesco replaced it pronto, extended the store, and are working on replacing that store already!

However, in a weirder one, the one in Lucan was a Tesco. Then a H. Williams. Then a Crazy Prices. And now its a Tesco again... and I think it still has the same floor tiles.

RadioCity

Did anyone notice when Tesco arrived first in 1996/97, the brand was "Tesco Ireland" giving the notion there was something distinctly "Irish" about it, not British.

Since then and as refits progressed, the store branding "Tesco Ireland" has disappeared, now the red, white and blue Tesco sign is above all the stores.

Lux23

I really miss Crazy Prices!!

Hagar

RadioCity wrote:

Did anyone notice when Tesco arrived first in 1996/97, the brand was "Tesco Ireland" giving the notion there was something distinctly "Irish" about it, not British.

Since then and as refits progressed, the store branding "Tesco Ireland" has disappeared, now the red, white and blue Tesco sign is above all the stores.

Anyone else remember Cadbury's Irish Roses?

L1011

RadioCity wrote: »

Did anyone notice when Tesco arrived first in 1996/97, the brand was "Tesco Ireland" giving the notion there was something distinctly "Irish" about it, not British.

Since then and as refits progressed, the store branding "Tesco Ireland" has disappeared, now the red, white and blue Tesco sign is above all the stores.

Maynooth has "Ireland" written below the Tesco; its on the till rolls, etc.

The Real B-man

Kat1170 wrote: »

The infamous 'Yellow Pack'

Ahh yes the Quinnsworth Value range

RadioCity

MYOB wrote: »

Maynooth has "Ireland" written below the Tesco; its on the till rolls, etc.

Must be plenty of Irish people there, and not in Letterkenny which is a R,W and B Tesco!! No mention of Tesco Ireland. Tesco Poland maybe...:D

Now that I think about it, neither Clearwater and Clare Hall are Tesco "Ireland" are they?

boardsdotie

Now i know how much santa paid for my atari £113.00 :eek:

That was really expensive back then.

dazberry

RadioCity wrote: »

Did anyone notice when Tesco arrived first in 1996/97, the brand was "Tesco Ireland" giving the notion there was something distinctly "Irish" about it, not British.

I'm sure???? Tesco where here (as Tesco) prior to 96 - dipping there toes in the market from time to time. Definitely they had discount stores here under different names - such as "3 Guys" in the late 70s / early 80s.

"3 Guys" were sort of like Lidl / Aldi in that it was a discount store, and most of the stuff was on palettes in boxes etc (no fancy shelves, lights, mirrors and shop psychology in these places), and (if I'm thinking of the right shop - it could of course have been Goobays) charged 3p per plastic bag so people brought their own - plastic bag tax aren't we great me ar$e.

In our house there were 2 shops done - one in Quinnsworth and one in 3 Guys/Goobays/Tescos? - just to try stretch those miserable few pence in the 80s.

I remember when the Quinnsworth in the Killbarrack shopping centre (still a kip) became a Crazy Prices. The great thing about CrazyP was that their announcements with the naselly "Crazy prices at crazy prices" were often broken by some classics like - "Johnoo to da stooore roo-em Johnoo to da stooore roo-em".

D.

L1011

3 Guys and Gubays were the same store, although I think in different time periods - Albert Gubay owned both of them. The chronology might have been something along the line of selling 3 Guys to Tescos and then coming back in as Gubay's, though.


Anyone remember when Power Supermarkets also owned Penneys? You'd get these mini shopping centres with a Quinnsworth, Penneys and Lifestyle Sports; the old one in Naas was just knocked there recently; but the one in Galway is still there, still has a Tesco thats in two seperate units! Food/non-food; which I think was fairly common.

dazberry

MYOB wrote: »

3 Guys and Gubays were the same store, although I think in different time periods - Albert Gubay owned both of them. The chronology might have been something along the line of selling 3 Guys to Tescos and then coming back in as Gubay's, though.

Ah yes - very good - I do remember 3 Guys and Gubays and I honestly think there may have been a brief period of Tesco in the middle - well in the Greendale shop anyway. The worst thing about the place was that it was beside the dentists

D.

Dudess

I worked in Quinnsworth in Paul's Street Shopping Centre, Cork when it was on the verge of becoming Tesco (1997/98) so I didn't get to live the whole "proper" Quinnsworth experience. Gutted the lovely blue sweatshirts were discontinued before I started there. Damn them for making the subsequent uniform about a million times more flattering.

Firetrap

Oh yeah, I remember the Maynooth one. It wasn't the nicest in the early 90s when I was a student. They did sell a lot of pasta though!

They had a Crazy Prices in Portlaoise and it was a right dive. For some reason, they had toy gorillas hanging from the ceiling over the fruit and veg and it just added to the general awful low-rentedness of the place. Were the prices really that crazy or was it just a psychological thing to make you think that because you were shopping in a mini-warehouse, you were getting things cheaper?

RadioCity

Firetrap wrote: »

. Were the prices really that crazy

I don't think they were all that crazy. The "Crazies" in Northern Ireland were not much different from Stewarts (equivalent of Quinnsworth), but we also had the pleasure of West Side Stores!

For those not aware of what it was, it was a "Western" themed supermarket. I could describe it now, but it was just so unbelievably weird by todays standards.
You may have seen it advertised on telly at the time.

And then there was the posh version of all of them...Bloomfields! As far as I know there were only 2 of them, one in Bangor, Co Down and the other in Dun Laoghaire. Whilst Crazy Prizes might have meant lower prices, Bloomfields offered the exclusiveness of a nice supermarket with a clean floor.:D

Mrs. MacGyver

MYOB wrote: »

Maynooth has "Ireland" written below the Tesco; its on the till rolls, etc.

I think the one in Drumcondra has too! (well it had in 1999 when it opened)

i had that fiserprice phone they had in the Quinnsworht Ad, didn't know it was 14.99 pounds (its in the attic). i loved Quinnswoth, ah the red, green and white signs...the nostalgia.

Maurice Pratt's children went to school with my best friend in Westmeath, its his claim to fame!!

Agent Smith

Mrs. MacGyver wrote: »

Maurice Pratt's children went to school with my best friend in Westmeath, its his claim to fame!!

funny, Because His son alan went to school with me.

and i live in Killiney

L1011

RadioCity wrote: »

I don't think they were all that crazy. The "Crazies" in Northern Ireland were not much different from Stewarts (equivalent of Quinnsworth), but we also had the pleasure of West Side Stores!

Oh god, I remember parking in the West Side Stores somewhere in Belfast and coming back to find the RUC "minding" the car - turns out we'd picked the wrong area to park a southern registered car in the early 1990s...

On a similar note, remember Wellworths? Those ad jingles, something like "more more more, value wellworths, value wellworths" I think...

cazzy

I have that Monopoly and it was only £8.99 back then !

Quinnsworth holds bad memories for me. I crashed my fathers car in the Quinnsworth car park in 1998 when I was a snapper. Didn't take up driving seriously again until 2007.

pauro 76

I remember Maurice Pratt popping up in the news as some Director General of some company? What was it? I remember the adverts really well. I love this forum.

Ruu_Old

He is CEO of C&C Group right now.

Shan75

I remember the Five Star store in Limerick before it became Quinnsworth.It was one of those old crappy little places with two cash registers and a little place in the corner for fags and drink.Kind of cool thinking about it now compared to the big characterless stores we now have.It didn't last too long after it became Quinnsworth.