Popularity of uprights

[vintagerepairer]

Trebor, Sebo fan, for me you nailed it. On-board tools for quick bits, separate cylinder for as better clean. That I feel is the way to go, though for those people in society who don't want to spend too much of their short life cleaning houses in any great detail (I label these people having their priorities right) then on-board tools are probably all that is required. Not that I am saying the differences aren't fully noticeable. Just not required. Linda was here today and it shows. My flat sparkles. She has told me many times in the course of conversations that people say their home is better when she's done it for them. But that's because she does take time to do a good, thorough job, vacuuming and cleaning into all the places she knows that get dirty in a particular home. She charges for it of course, she charges a good deal of money, but she is worth every last penny.

I think some things are changed to make life easier but come at a cost, like on-board tools. Other things seem to be a massive improvement on an old favourite. I let Linda iron my formal shirts for me now too, as I had a brief unexpected spell in hospital earlier this year and when I came out I found that she'd cleaned and washed and ironed for me. I can manage the washing without a problem, but seeing my shirts after she'd pressed them for me actually brought a lump to my throat as only my mother had ever done such a beautiful job of them. I am hopeless. So she got the job permanently. It turns out that Linda has this huge spaceship of a steam iron, its one of those generator things and she gets through my shirts in no time, and yet they look pristine. The only 'cost' as I can see is the actual price ticket and the storage of the whole thing. Linda said her only wish would be that the iron could be unplugged from the base unit. Its a marvellous piece of equipment.

 

[jmurray01]

Talking about the steam generator, my mother runs an ironing service and she uses a Morphy Richards Jet Stream iron for that, which has been getting steamy for 3 years now without fault.

It'll need a new filter soon but apart from that I expect it to run for many more years maintenance free.

I don't iron myself, in my opinion the creases come out with your body heat when the clothes are worn. Of course if I require formal attire I will iron using my seldom used cordless unbranded iron which works OK I suppose, nothing like the power of the Jet Stream though.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Oh the cordless irons. How I remember those coming on sale in the middle 1980's. What excitement for a market which had seen virtually no major changes since steam irons were invented. Morphy Richards were the ones to invent this. My father worked for Morphy Richards for almost all of his working life, in fact my mother and I did too until 1970, but father retired a couple of years or so before this model went out to the shops. However, he was there when it was being designed and several employees were given cordless irons during the design stages to see how they got on. My father bought his home for my mother to use. She absolutely hated it. I have no idea if she fed this back to Morphy Richards or not. These irons were massive sellers and it didn't take very long for other manufacturers to make their own versions.

The comments I heard were always the same. "It gets cold when it's not connected to the base". This must have hit home with the various manufacturers, as cordless irons were very quickly superseded by 'corded-cordless' irons which one way or another gave the user the choice of cordless ironing for most items, with corded operation for heavier items which required the iron to spend more time off the base unit and / or using more steam. Although you could still get the odd cordless-only models, they were at the cheaper end of the range. By the middle 1990's almost all cordless irons had been discontinued. I think because by then people generally knew they were not all that effective. Like the on-board tools mentioned earlier, it took away one problem (the troublesome cord) and replaced it with another (an iron which was too cool to use). So the user had to decide which was worse, and traditional corded irons won.

 

[jmurray01]

And that, is why I hate my cordless iron! You summed it up in a nutshell!

I also have a nice manly pink Tesco Value corded steam iron I bought from... Well, Tesco, a few years ago for £3.99 I believe.

It works quite well but as I said, I rarely use it.

 

[vintagerepairer]

I think I have made it clear already that my father did not spend money easily. Even with the discounts offered to staff on new and rebuilt goods, we did not have many appliances at home. Though if we had an appliance and Morphy Richards made such a thing, then it was M R every time. The exception was my mothers vacuum cleaner of course. I am not sure M R made cleaners when she got her Hoover 370 and it may even have not been new. The Hoover 262 she was was from a private sale. But everything else was M R or a sub brand of them. Not that we had much.

 

[jmurray01]

Morphy Richards is a brand that although good, I've never really taken to, as I did Bosch, Electrolux, Zanussi etc...

 

[vintagerepairer]

I sent that message too soon. Sorry. I meant to say that my mother had a M R senior dry iron, it was an original sort with porcelain top. If it ever went wrong, father took it to work and it was put right again. My mother did upgrade to a steam iron when she joined the company and bought herself one, but she was never happy with it as it did not function like the Hoover steam irons which she has seen in the shops, as she had to wait for the water to boil, and then it could not be stopped. When M R bought out their own push-button cold drip steam iron she bought one of those and used it for a good deal of years.

 

[jmurray01]

So back years ago the water on steam irons had to boil ?

I thought the formula of injecting cold water onto the hot sole plate that is used today would have been easily thought of and used years ago too. It seems not.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Well M R was a brand which focused on features, price, and reasonable quality. These principles stood firm until the middle 1960's when M R was merged with GEC. Until then, it was still run by the founders Messrs Morphy and Richards. After that M R changed hands several times. The quality aspect of the goods it produced fluctuated greatly, but was always at the cheaper end of the markets. In the 1980's if you wanted quality you bought Rowenta or Tefal. These days all small appliances are much of a muchness I think.

 

[vintagerepairer]

With respect of steam irons, the principle of dripping cold water onto a hot plate is the way that they were originally designed and this is how the Hoover iron worked. The M R iron came a short while later, and the water had to boil in the tank, I do believe the tank was strapped to the heating element and was refereed to as a boiler. The steam could then not be stopped, but why M R made their iron this way I do not know. The next range of irons were just like the Hoover, with a cold drip and a button to switch the steam off and on.

 

[anthony]

uprights with on board tools

it seems to me we buy uprights with on board tools because you would be hard pushed to find one without i am sure if hoover started knocking out a modern junior or senior[no tool kit ] they would fly off the shelves most of my friends and family hate the onboard tools and would love a simple vacuum without the accesories then again the modern upright has its place in the home alongside the other fashion items giant fridge and the huge cooker that rarely gets used to its capacity and of course in the living room you will find the obligotry plasma telly on the wall above the fake electric fire sorry my spelling is terrible

 

[jmurray01]

So once it started steaming it would keep going, how silly... I don't know how Morphy Richards could have thought that would surpass the traditional method!

 

[jmurray01]

Trust me Anthony, if HOOVER produced a new Junior or Senior with a dirty fan motor then I'd be the first to buy it!

 

[sebo_fan]

Well.. talking of dirty fan uprights, one that was released a few years ago and managed to achieve good sales is the Hometek Light n Easy. I had two of them and, well the noise put me off more than anything but I liked the keen cheap price, given that despite the lack of filtration compared to Oreck, the Hometek was nothing more than a very similar update, albeit with a pretty nasty brush roll and a head light as standard. I put one in my family holiday home to use on the carpets and my Sebo Dart came home with me! You could say, without the necessary "Hoover" badge, the "Hometek" is the closest thing you'll likely to find if you are looking for a soft bagged upright vacuum with a dirty fan, next to the premium Oreck.

 

[vintagerepairer]

I used to stock those. Horrible things. But the people who bought them seemed to like them.

 

[anthony]

the light and easy vac

i work with the elderly and they seem to like this machine but the noise is terrible i mentioned this to one of my ladies she said oh yes its noisy but i just turn my hearing aid off and its fine i had to laugh but seriously they are terrible machines and cant be compared to a junior or senior what i meant was if hoover started making those machines again they would fly off the shelves because they did exactly what they were designed to do and very well at that also at a price that everyone could afford and lets face it the design was simple and easy to repair loads of my old ladies often say to me[ when they find out i like vacs ]i wish i still had my Hoover junior i had it 40 years and all it ever needed was a new belt now and again and then they bring out there present vacuum the usual dyson or somthing similar and say i dont use it because its to heavy . You see a lot of those retro looking fridges around and lots of small kichen apps that are of a retro design well how about a retro vacuum cleaner and who better to make it its got to be hoover reproducing one of its iconic machines

 

[vintagerepairer]

Well it is an interesting debate. I think the difference between what we today term 'retro' major appliances like fridges and so on, and a retro vacuum cleaner, is that the major appliances are fashionable for their vintage look, whereas a vacuum cleaner is fashionable for it's ultra model style. There is no accounting for fashion.

Take a mobile telephone and a landline telephone. As mentioned on another message strip, there is a certain demand it seems for a retro looking house telephone. I doubt that a mobile telephone -even if packed to the top with the latest features- would ever sell if it had a retro look about it. You could take that retro theme two ways when it comes to mobiles; you could have say a mobile telephone designed to look like those 1980's house-brick mobile telephones, thereby combining modern technology and old styling, like the retro fridges, or, like the retro washing machines and dishwashers which Smeg make, it could actually bear little to no resemblance at all of the actual vintage product which it is trying to be, and just has an overall vintage appearance.

I think the Maytag Satellite cleaner from a few years a go dipped it's toe in the retro waters so far as cleaning goes, and from what I recall it was not exactly going to out sell a Dyson. I realise of course that the Satellite had many a design issue which prevented it from being one of the better cleaners on sale at that time, but that would have only come to light after the purchase had been made and would have been mostly subjective anyway. From what I can establish, it did not have much of an appeal. I do wonder if this may have been due to the fact that a good deal of people who may be buying retro styled appliances would have been a little too young to recall the constellation first hand, whereas although the same could be said about telephones and major appliances, these products would have appeared many times as props in films, soap operas, and comedies, many of which have been repeated over and over again to the present day.

When all is said and done, I must say that my own opinion is that a Junior or Senior type vacuum cleaner on sale today would not sell well at all. Whether we like it or not, it seems to be the Dyson and those cleaners which look like a Dyson which are in the greatest demand.

 

[jmurray01]

Well I read what you wrote Benny and was nodding all through it.

Although I wish HOOVER would produce another Junior or Senior, I think I'd probably be the only one in my area to buy it!

People do seem to love their cumbersome Dysons these days which clean nothing like the dirty fans of the 90s...

 

[jmurray01]

That should have read "which clean nothing like the dirty fans of the 70s".

Trust me to post without consuming a full cup of coffee!

 

[gottahaveahoove]

especially something like, um, a

1977 Senior "Ranger". Rumor has it, there's nothing like them.