F is for From Nutcrackers to Christmas Crackers

So there was I, on one of the hottest days of July, if not the whole summer, pulling twenty-four Christmas crackers with myself, as you do . . . n't! The final hours of Poundworld Plus brought with them a Brucey-Bonus for the novelty-tat arm of the collection!

I'd already had some smaller 'tree' ones, when these were reduced from 50p a box to 25p per box, which - if you recall the other posts at the time (June/July) - was further reduced at the till by whatever had been sent to the computer by head-office or the Official Receivers that morning - suffice to say I got silver back from my grubby quid!

Bog-standard fare - die-cut, stiff-card construction, simple CAD design in positive and negative silver/white colour-ways, six per pack gave me the aforementioned 24-crackers to deal with, and I wasn't waiting 'till now!

First disappointment was no Matchbox knock-off soldiers! Each box had one micro-plane, one hair tie, one 'tiddlywink' frog and one very thin, styrene ring, with two from a top, a spinner or a fake nail. Most of the things in the 'Image for illustration purposes only' picture are of better quality than those actually included but isn't that always the way!

The 'tree' crackers; I don't seem to have photographed the contents, if I find them in the increasing chaos of the 'bringing together' before Xmas I'll try to, but memory serves they were as crap as the bigger ones and relatively similar. Except they were only four per tray, and two of them - per set - had the [same] card-puzzle (like Kinder's) or bookmark, leaving me with only a few bits of polymer shite!

I didn't get the fortune-telling fish, the trumpet or the magic calculator! Both sets were imported by ITP, with the tree-crackers further known to have been manufactured by [PT] Cermai Makmur of Indonesia, so you might find these in KMart . . . now! It's all-right - I buy this shit so you don't have to!