As I digest the news that Kiwi are ceasing the sale of its shoe polish in the UK, due to plummeting demand in the age of trainers, I find myself in mourning chiefly for the tin. What will the ritual of shoe-polishing feel like when it no longer starts with the thumb-against-index-finger rub of the butterfly-twist opener? That was a brilliant invention by Kiwi, and I’m afraid that the shoe polish tin that survives in the British market – Cherry Blossom’s, the same shallow cylindrical shape as Kiwi’s but with a ‘press hard here and the other side pops off’ opening system – doesn’t provide quite the Proustian kick of Sunday evenings in the 20th century: that combination of nausea at the strong smell and at the thought of tomorrow’s history test.
Like many on hearing the news of Kiwi’s imminent withdrawal, I rushed to my store of shoe-cleaning items to check how much was left. The answer was not much, and what was there reminded me of the things I will not miss if shoe polish vanishes from our lives. For a start, when I tried to open the remaining tin of black Kiwi, I found that the butterfly-twist opener had somehow loosened, so when I twisted it the top wing was a millimetre too far away to ‘bite’ the lid, and nothing moved. On prising it open with a screwdriver, I was greeted not by a lovely glistening, oily surface, but by a few dry crumbs of what looked like charcoal.
Not that things were much better when I tried to open the Cherry Blossom tin. Its press-down mechanism had also grown weak and ineffective during its years there, and I couldn’t get it to budge. In my panic, I grabbed hold of the bottle of ‘liquid’ navy-blue shoe polish, supposed to be the quick option for a rushed world, and tried smearing it on my navy shoes, pressing the foamy applicator down hard.
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