Any cracker recommendations please, or ones to avoid?

[cadelaide]

"family" ones I suppose, DCs are 12, 10 and 5.

We have the ones from Hawkin (I think) that all have a wind up reindeer or Father Christmas inside. Once all crackers pulled, you have a race with your wind up figure. Good fun.

We had a lot of fun with Concerto Crackers one year - no musical skills needed, whistles are numbered and a nominated 'conductor' points to the relevant whistle-holder. Mind you, wine had been taken - hence the videos which appear to show us all too convulsed with laughter to play, just a riot of (wrong) squeaks and mistimed toots. And a 5 year old might prefer the usual joke/plastic rubber to serious whistle-blowing... you can keep whistles and so on for a following year.

Likewise Handbell Crackers, more expensive but these are nicely made little bells and almost made me think we should buy a set of proper handbells and go all Von Trapp Family... until I saw the price of said proper handbells.

Be warned though that at least one of the handbells will probably be a semi-tone out, which will drive you a bit mad.

Oh those Concerto crackers are brill! It still makes me laugh remembering my mum trying to conduct us all after far too much wine!!

But the thing is with handbells, you're meant to have the odd one a semi-tone out.