I considered posting this to MPSIMS but this is kind of about food and I wouldn’t be surprised if it sparks some kind of discussion.
About a month ago when discussing little Christmas gifts to get I mentioned Kindereggs to my mother. “That’s a great idea for stocking stuffers!” she said and I agreed to order a case but I wasn’t going to order them in mid-October for people to eat at Christmas.
So this evening I was suddenly struck by the fact that I really needed to order those eggs now. I had found them online when I looked before but now I can’t find them anywhere. The few places that I could locate that listed them were out of stock, only had retail priced Christmas ones (as opposed to a reasonable bulk rate like I was anticipating), or some special giant ones.
And so I turn to you, the Dopers, for help. If you’ve got a line on Kindereggs then let me know. I’ll even settle for a Germany shop that will take my credit card and ship to the US. Worst case scenario I’ll order a much smaller quantity of the Christmas themed ones but that’s kind of a let down compared to have a few dozen of them.
For those who need to know what Kindereggs are the best way I can describe them is German Crackerjacks. They’re hollow chocolate eggs with a small capsule inside and the capsule contains some type of toy surprise.
Well, they’re set up to handle US sales at least. If it comes down to it I might have to go with them but I want to get a case or two and ordering it as individual eggs is not the way to go for that.
In Calgary, we can get them at our local drugstores, and pretty much every grocery store in the area. At least we could, but I haven’t checked in a while. If you can wait until this evening, I can check the stores nearest me, and let you know.
I just checked the online version of my nearest drugstore (London Drugs) and they have them at $2.69 for 3. Note that they are called “Kinder Surprise”, and not “Kindereggs” here.
If they have them in stock tonight, I don’t mind sending them to you. For the record, though, the little toys are kind of fun, unless you get a puzzle, but the chocolate itself is not great. However, if you’re getting them for the fun factor, and not the flavour, the quality of the chocolate probably doesn’t matter much.
Never heard of them so I can vouch for them, but Canada is closer than Europe. I’m pretty sure they sell them by the case in my local Costco, which is ironic when you consider that’s a US company.
My in-laws bring Kindereggs from Ireland for the kids. The chocolate is terrible and the toys are almost always useless (the sole exception is the one which stamps out footprints when you roll it on paper), but the kids love them anyway. We have a dozen or so eggs in the house right now for Christmas.
We also have Christmas crackers. Grab an end, someone else grabs the other, and pull - there’s a loud pop and a toy, a fortune, and a paper crown fall out. We eat Christmas dinner with crowns on all of our heads.
Either you have a different taste for chocolate, or you’re getting old eggs. Over here when I buy them, the egg is made from good-quality milk chocolate.
Useless? Well, maybe for adults, but kids play with toys. That’s their use. If you mean that buying 10 eggs results in 10 toys lying around and taking up space … well yeah, that’s the downside.
You can always become one of the egg -collectors like here in Germany, though - there are special fairs for collectors, and the rare and old toys fetch from some hundred to some thousands of Euros (you can see this on German ebay - the name is Ü-Eier, short for Überraschungseier = Surprise eggs. The “kinder” = children refers to the brand of the company, there are several other Kinder products.
The official ferrero site (the company that produces Kinder …, Nutella and a lot of other sweets) gives this as the official Canadian site. (For some reason, the offical USA site only lists three of the dozen sweet products - Nutella, Raffaello and Rocher. Apparently the rest is not popular enough in the US??)
So contacting them, they should be able to tell you the shop nearest to you where they shipped enough crates to… I hope you find the eggs.
Apparently they are not legal for for importation into the US anymore, although I know the German store down the street still has them. From Wikipedia: