Читать книгу TV Cream Toys Lite - Steve Berry - Страница 23

It’s bizarre that this should even make it into a children’s wish list of most desired games or toys, being the very definition of the anti-toy Ostensibly a cross between a savings bank and a chocolate-dispensing machine, it actually fails to live up to the promise of either. But that is to underestimate its novelty.

Although in reality it amounted to a deferral of pleasure, no more than a tuppenny barrier between the chocolate and your mouth, there was still something of the faintly exotic in getting hold of a load more of those mini-Dairy Milks and Bournevilles than you would ever find in a box of Roses.¹ In the days before washing-powder tablets and digital cameras, the fascination with anything miniaturised was not to be underestimated.

See also ‘A La Cart Kitchen’, Mr Frosty, Whimsies

The classic dispenser was designed and moulded in ’50s-throwback red plastic (leading us to fancifully imagine that the Fonz himself would dish out his chocolate from one) with properly embossed gold Cadbury’s branding, plus it came preloaded with a dozen baby chocs.² In theory, a 2p piece slotted in the top would, with a twist of the hidden knob within, release a single, fully wrapped miniature that could then be enjoyed in isolation. In truth, and in part because not only was the chassis of the dispenser made of plastic but also the lock and keys, it took about ten seconds for greed to overcome the flimsy workings of this metaphorical chocolate chastity belt.

With the contents therefore devoured in their entirety (and not so easily replaced, at least not until the next Argos trip), what essentially remained was a moneybox and, given that it generally wouldn’t contain more than about 14p, not a very good one at that.

1 Oh, and Terry’s Neapolitans fitted too, didn’t they? Want to know what happened to Terry’s, once the pride of York, now just a Dawn French-perpetuated brand extension of Kraft Foods Inc, Illinois? The corporate giant bought the 1000-worker-strong factory in 1993 and closed it down in 2005. York Fruits? Produced in Slovakia, mate. Chocolate Orange? Czekoladka pomarañczowy more like. Where’s Michael Moore when you need him, eh?

2 Chocoholics, masochists and fatties rejoice! The freely available Chocolate Machine Money Box from Humbrol is a fair enough modern approximation of the old Peter Pan version. And guess what? The chocolate miniatures are actually bigger than the ones that used to fit in the old machine.