1974: Pizza Hut

September 9, 2021

By AHNZ

Today in New Zealand history, 8 September, 1974, the country got its very first Pizza Hut. This was in New Lynn, Auckland. It was the first Pizza Hut restaurant to open and was the last to close.

I’ve been to this one but it has since been flattened to make more car parks at Lynmall. The one I feel most connected to though is the one at Northlands Mall in Christchurch. I spied that one a couple of weeks back and it looks the same as I remember it (1980s/90s) and I wonder what the building is used for currently? Storage, seemingly.

The Pizza Hut that our 1974 counterparts sat down to tonight in history was very different to the one we know today. You really did dine in as opposed to the fast-food model we know today. It was occasional and more time was taken. Pizza Hut was a family restaurant. There was also a long series of interesting toys for children, sometimes mechanical. One iconic Pizza Hut thing were their puzzle sheets waiting on the tables to keep kids going while they waited. These came along with some short red ‘Pizza Hut’ pencils that spread their way into every school classroom, workplace, or junk draw; Excellent branded advertising.

The big question is, why did Pizza Hut start up in 1974 and why did it have to re-invent its model in the 2010s? I think the answer is to be found in relation to the Kiwi’s changing idea of family meal time. Boomer parents liked showing off and had a very materialistic love-language toward their kids, treating them to special environments and foods and toys on public display. Pizza Hut and others supplied that demand while it lasted but that’s long over now.

The parents of today, Millennials, don’t try to substitute connection to their kids by giving them stuff. Millennial parents go the other way, becoming very intimate and personal with their children. Their kids are basically like best friends who you can tell what to do and who will serve as a captive audience for all the Global Warming and Gender Political PC puritanism that the Millennial loves to agitate about. Restaurant Brands has yet to find a way to use this relationship to sell people chicken and pizza.

Shrinky Dink

Pizza Hut issued ‘Shrinky Dink’ novelty item for Gen X kids in 1980. During this era, Pizza Hut was a family restaurant catering to Boomer parents who wanted to show family ‘love’ conspicuously. As a result, the Gen X kids got lots of cool stuff and Pizza Hut got to think it up and sell it.

This one was a sheet of plastic that was heat-activated in the oven at home and would reduce down to a hard little name tag 1/4 of the original size. Some kind of amazing magic trick! I’m not sure that sort of thing would impress a Zoomer but to the Gen X kid this ‘Shrinky Dink’ experience was a scientific wonder. Do try this at home.

As for the Incredible Hulk, that was flying high at the time thanks to a popular TV show. As I recall, there was also a Tip Top ice cream of a large Hulk foot and it tasted incredible.

Puzzles and Pencils

Pizza Hut also had these diverting puzzles for children to solve in their restaurants. Each table also had little red stub pencils with ‘Pizza Hut’ indented on them for use on the sheets. And, nice little round ‘Pizza Hut’ pencil sharpeners so you’d have all the equipment you needed to wait for your pizza to be served. Later, a pencil eraser emerged in the form of the Pizza Hut logo itself. And, when you went home, you would have back-up stationary to take to school. And, kids absolutely did.

It can be no accident that the pictures used in these old puzzle sheets were quite classy. That was in keeping with the family dining experience that Pizza Hut wanted to cultivate along with their nice booths, curtains, and low lighting. These images look a bit like Durer woodcuts or perhaps illustrations to go with some Dickens periodical. Very impressive, very on-brand. It’s probably also the case that they really were that old and, so, royalty free for Pizza Hut to go right ahead and re-use (if so, that’s a very interesting product cycle.)

“Pizza Hut is grateful to the publishers of Cole’s Funny Picture Books, Ross Halses and Sons Ltd for allowing us to publish these extracts.” – credit printed on the puzzle mat

Note also, GenX puzzles like these were fairly challenging. I don’t think Millennials or Zoomers would have enough of a high IQ to solve them these days.

Another clever Pizza Hut toy from the Boomer/GenX Family Restaurant era was the spinning top. Like the pencils, these little spinning tops permeated the human environment. They worked really well and, I guess, helped kids like me get the knack of how to impart circular motion using fine motor skills. The most fun was trying to make one spinning top outlast another.

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Image ref. Shrinky Hulk; https://twitter.com/oldshopsoz/status/994900013728727041

Image ref. Pizza Hut top http://malecek.com/db/ff/ph/ph-top.jpg

Image ref. Pizza Hut puzzle http://malecek.com/db/rest/ph-pm-nz-8x-1b.jpg

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