COVID-19 UPDATE

NEWS SPECIAL

YOU KNOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED WHEN...

IF LOCAL RETAILERS FELT UNDERVALUED FOR MANY YEARS, CORONAVIRUS HAS CHANGED ALL OFTHAT WITH THEIR ‘KEY WORKER’ STATUS BEING CELEBRATED IN SOME VERY UNUSUAL WAYS.

Local retailers across the UK could be forgiven for having felt a little undervalued by over the years despite providing essential products and services to the communities they serve from dawn till dusk seven days a week. Coronavirus has changed all of that, however, with the thoroughly deserved ‘key worker’ status bestowed on local retailers, placing them in the same bracket as NHS workers and first responders.

This recognition is long overdue and has come in many forms, some of them a little unusual. Take Top Trumps, the iconic card game which most retailers over the age of 30 will remember from their childhood.

Top Trumps has just launched a new Britain At Its Best game recognising the ‘Unsung Heroes’ that have kept Britain fed, watered, safe and healthy over the last couple of months.

The game celebrates those key workers who have “saved Britain during the pandemic” and includes everyone from doctors and nurses to binmen and couriers. Among those commemorated in playing card form are shop workers.

Claire Simon from Top Trumps, says: “Every single front-line key worker is, of course, a heroine and hero and would each score 10 (or even 11) out of 10 by any reckoning if we had devised a Hero category.”

The game costs £5 and is available at winningmoves.co.uk.

Meanwhile, US toy giant Mattel has launched a collection of #ThankYouHeroes Fisher-Price action figures celebrating the “everyday heroes” on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic – and yes, there’s a little ‘grocery store worker’ among them.