Well, to defend America’s…um, pride, we do have the Nestle Wonderball (http://www.wonderball.com). It used to come with little plastic toys inside, but apparently some children can’t tell the difference between Nestle chocolate and plastic (can’t really blame them), and so they were pulled due to the choking hazard. Now they’ve returned, with tattoos in the box and more candy (I think SweetTarts) inside.
Excuse me while I smirk a little, you are concerned with teeny tiny Murrican trailer dwellers choking so the toys were replaced by tattoos(known as transfers in the UK) but parents in the UK have called for such tattoos/transfers to be banned here because they are part of a drug culture, or at least the LSD doped ones are.
They claim that the pretty little pictures are similar to the tabs that several Sunday Filthy newspapers report are being sold in school playgrounds by Evil Drug Lords.
I dunno though it seems a bit incongruous to imagine some sharp-suited Jack Nicholson mafia Don with pockets full of candy covered drugs, skipping up and down the hopscotch zone warning seven years old rivals off his territory,
“You talkin’ to me ? Well I don’t see nobody else, so you must be talkin’ to me!!!”
A few years back, my husband did some work for a company that made the chocolate-covered-plastic-ball thingies. I don’t know what wound up on the market, but the samples he brought home were nearly impossible to open. Granted, I’m 40 years older than the targeted consumer, but I like to think I’m smart enough and strong enough to pry open a cheesy plastic ball!
Anyway, that assignment didn’t last very long, and as thrilled as I was that he was working for a chocolate factory, all I got out of it was a big sack of M&Ms… what a huge let-down that was… I wanted the GOOD stuff…
<sigh> Just ignore me…
And, of course, the Obligatory Snopes Link[sup]tm[/sup].
Robin
Robin
They’re not like Cracker Jacks! Cracker Jacks prizes are lame as hell. Kinder Eggs have nifty little mechanical toys that require some simple assembly (most of the time) and show a lot of ingenuity.
I ate loads of them when I was in Yurp 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by jr8 *
**
Just a minor hijack: You have no idea how confusing it was for us when, on our first day in England and suffering extreme sleep loss, we encountered a sign announcing “humped zebra crossing”…
(note for UK people: in the US we call them “crosswalks” … the only thing I could think of for several minutes was that it was like a “deer crossing” sign only… really really weird.)
Sounds like the confusion I had driving through Germany on our way to Amsterdam, not a lot of sleep, still suffering from jet lag.
“Lookie over there - a town called Ausfart (sp), hardy har har.”
Little while later. . . .
“Look kids, another exit for Ausfart.”
Still further down the road. . . .
“Damn, Ausfart must be a big town but I wonder why I have never heard of it. It must be behind the forrest 'cause I don’t see a thang!”
Almost to Amsterdam. . . .
"Look there it is again! Ummmm. . . . . ya think it might mean “exit”?
Helloooooooo!?!?!?!?!? :eek: :::ding ding ding:::
Oh, and I agree. Cracker Jacks? NO WAY! Not even close.
ok, this is the pit…
** Give me a god damn fucking break**
I used to get them at a British food store (weep:500! my friends always bring some back) and that’s what she told me.
just label the damn things. I have seen McDonald’s toys with equally hazardous pieces…but yet they get away with it by labeling them 3 and up.
Those are the closest we have to cool prizes. Just try and remember back to the cereal prize days. they are kind of like that. figurines and really cool toys to build.
The special Easter and Christmas ones are bigger toys, but IMHO they are not as good, not as “cute”.
But, they are always luck of the draw. Sometimes you get a really lame puzzle. and that really sucks.
and those Nestle ball things suck. great more damn candy for our fat little american kids. YAY!
And cracker jacks? WTF!!! a paper ring was my last “prize”. Wow, I hope the people at cracker Jack don’t exert themselves too much in the creative dept.
also, kinder eggs have milk chocolate on the outside of the egg, white chocolate on the inside.
Reminds me of my Adventures in Switzerland.
“Look, the sign says Einbahnstrasse. How can we still be on Einbahnstrasse? We turned a corner! And I still can’t find Einbahnstrasse on the map!”
(It means one-way street.)
I think they key is that it is an inedible object inside an edible object.
Yeah I know that no one not totally high could ever mistakenly eat the little plastic egg by mistake, but hey. That’s the US for ya.
And thus, I make another tiny advance through all that damn British stuff in the Hitchhiker’s Guide. (Don’t hit! Kidding!)
So when Man proves that there is no god and that black is white, he gets killed at the nearest crosswalk? Man, it was much funnier when I thought Man was trampled to death by actual zebras.
If only they had guns inside them.
Then they’d be safe for all, and you’d be able to buy them in any USA shopping mall. Charlton Heston could do the TV ads.
Redbang
To continue the hijack: Zebra crossings are the ones with the striped lines on the pavement and the yellow flashing lights on black and white striped poles next to them. Pedestrians crossing at zebra crossings have the right of way; any oncoming traffic must stop for anyone crossing there.
The other kind of crosswalk (crossing at stoplights, like in the US) is called a pelican crossing. I’m sure there’s a logical reason for that, but I don’t know what it is.
I realize this has nothing to do with Kinder eggs, but hey, it’s one more bit of ignorance fought.
You want adventures in Switzerland?
“Look, there’s a sign for a town called Uberalp. Let’s check it out!”
There’s nothing like seeing a Swiss Army convoy (repleat with tanks) coming around the bend at you, when there’s 8 feet of snow on one side and 200+ feet of nothing on the other. Despite the fact ours was the outside lane, they waved us over to the inside and went around us, bless their hearts. And they didn’t even lose a single tank.
inkblot “Wait a second…there’s no town up here!”
just for you jr8
Pelican crossing is a pseudo-acronym for Pedestrian Light Controlled crossing.
They even spelt it wrong just to help everyone remember it.