A Tiger Tea bus

1900 advertisement, Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, Dunedin

There's no other tea like the Tiger,
It's no matter what they say,
And if you want a real good sort
Then have the Blendid [sic] Tiger Tea.

Then there's no tea like the Tiger,
Not withstanding all their puff,
They try to imitate its qualities
But they haven't got the stuff.

Then drink no Blend but the Tiger,
For its merits are supreme,
The other comparisons are just similar,

As skim milk is to cream.

Ashburton Guardian, 6 April 1894

Tiger Tea turned up in this country as an imported blend around 1888, and became the brand produced by Rattray & Sons, Dunedin. By the 1890s, the brand was well-established in the South Island.

Tuapeka Times, 31 January 1903

Otago Daily Times, 29 February 1912

Evening Post, 4 December 1945

At the Toitu Otago Setters Museum in Dunedin, they have a wonderful Tiger Tea livery electric trolley bus.

Gorgeous, this. Not only with the extremely cool Tiger Tea branding all over it ...

... but also a chance to sit inside the bus, on the original hard seats (oh, how it put me back to being a kiddy catching buses like this here in Auckland with my mum!) where you can watch a video screen placed up front, showing what it was like to catch that bus in the mid 1970s along one of the Dunedin bus routes, along with conversations based on a single newspaper of the day. A highlight of an excellent museum.