Laura Freeman Laura Freeman

The Tiger trap

This high-street store is the perfect brand for the internet-addled Insta-shopper

There is a Tiger on the loose. It is stalking our high streets. It is prowling our train stations. It has cubs in every shopping mall. It is the Tiger of Tat. And when it roars, it roars: BUY. Tiger, a home accessories chain which opened its first UK shop in 2005, is an emporium of the ephemeral, a grand bazaar of the banal. Here is everything you never needed: oddments and sodments, party bits and barbecue bobs, plastic flotsam and cardboard jetsam. Come buy, come buy! Whoopee cushions and avocado stress-balls, spangled hula hoops and fingerless yoga mittens, cheerleaders’ pompoms and sequinned bow ties. There are walls of coloured playground ‘slime’, tubs of gunk in lurid colours.

Everything is something else. A Sellotape dispenser in the shape of a frog. A duckling nailbrush. A banana pencil case. A pineapple lamp. There are lid-lifters — when a wooden spoon won’t do — like warthogs, and spatula rests — who knew? — like sharks. In this modern Wonderland nothing is the right size. Playing cards are as tall as books, pétanque balls fit in a matchbox, marshmallows are humongous, colossal, XXL. I went to the Tottenham Court Road branch for an ironing spray bottle and came out a quarter of an hour later with a paint-your-own-puzzle kit and a packet of spangled sink scourers. It took ten minutes in minimalist Muji to recover.

Tiger, properly Flying Tiger Copenhagen, is the perfect brand for the internet-addled Insta-shopper. To walk its winding aisles — like its Scandinavian forefather Ikea, once you’re in, there is no turning back — is to replicate the mindless scrolling of social media. Sateen eye mask? Like. Kitten tea strainer? Like. Rainbow sticker pouch? Like. Few Tiger trinkets cost more than a pound.

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