Explore a retro-futurist city where spaceships of unimaginable speed zoom to faraway worlds. Bushells Tea leans into the cultural appetite for technological progress in this animated advertisement from c. 1941, which screened in Australian cinemas.

Released during wartime, the 35mm colour film adopts a newsreel format, showing utopian visions of a high-tech city where an adventurous pilot ventures to the far reaches of space to deliver the perfect cup of tea. Along with echoing the big-eyed, bouncy style of popular cartoons from the Golden Age of Animation, irreverent gags and a row of jovial milk bar patrons lend the ad a twist of local humour.

The out-of-this-world concept seems to reflect the audience's need for escapist visions during a time of strife, drawing on the positive drive towards progress to frame Bushells as a brand that '[goes] so much further than ordinary teas'. It is also interesting to note the similarities between this reel and popular science-fiction serials of the time, like Flash Gordon.