Which are the best Christmas crackers you've found?

[FauveGoldRings]

I've seen two boxes in Waitrose I'm tempted by, but they're relatively pricey. One has wind-up plastic animals in them, all different - £10 for 6. The other has the usual wine stopper, photo frame, etc, but better quality than most - £20 for 6. We have difficult MIL to please and two kids, aged 8 and 12. I know it would be better to fill my own (fill-your-own ones also on sale in Waitrose), but that means shopping (sigh) for small stuff.

What have you bought? Any good?

ah, go to hawkins bazaar or summat. or tescos have party sections. 6 wind up animals do NOT cost £10.

am always shocked at the price of crackers, for the tat in them.

one year I did, for my gardening family, packets of seeds (opened up some tescos value crackers and bunged them in)

Adsa had some which had both adult and children's crackers in (boxes of 12) for abount £15.

I love the seeds idea. Sadly MIL has nowhere to plant them. Will have a look at Asda. I know 6 wind-up animals don't cost £10 really...

If anyone had an idea similar to seeds...I've thought about tiny glass animals, but again would have to try to find them, sigh.

Actually, have just thought - I could try and find 6 tiny photo frames, because we all like those.

yeah gwan

or post more things that you all like and we'll give you ideas, we like doing that, I think. or I do anyway.

i bet you know better jokes too.

oh shit, I have forgotten to buy crackers grrr

oh and...how about herbs then? everyone has space for a herb or two...

oh, and I didn't actually say what people had. that was part of the suprise.

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I was just thinking about chocs, actually - those Green and Black's mini-bars. Thornton's would be good, but I'll have two coeliacs in the house, so choc must be gluten-free.

MIL wouldn't be willing to give 'erbs a go, I'm afraid. Very limited in her approach. I had thought jewellery, but we'll have two men and a boy. I suppose if they're at specific place settings, you can do m and f.

Has anyone actually seen teeny-weeny photo-frames on sale for not very much? Tesco? Boots?

Halford have quite a few mini-tools type things for about 99p (in tubs on the checkout counters) which are good for fill-you-own things for the guys. And I bought perfume miniatures for the women to go in ours.

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nice looking ones half price in Homebase.

I didn't look at the Puddings game - MIL wouldn't play. No, the ones I was considering aren't games ones, just ordinary crackers with very slightly better gifts than the norm.

I've just trailed round town looking for little things to stick in crackers I will keep looking, but I hear Homebase calling (thanks for that tip-off)...

If anyone's interested, some Thornton's chocs are indeed gluten free, and they're clearly marked as such, which is great. See how well I'm doing my research?

And thanks for the Halfords suggestion, LunarSea, would be great if I could be arsed to trek over there Mind you, if it comes to it, I probably will, too.

The Pier had nice crackers on special offer the other day.

Tassis, thank you so much for the Homebase suggestion. I just nipped there and got 12 perfectly OK crackers for £1.79, and 6 slightly posher ones, to appease MIL, for a mere £3.79.

I'm well pleased

I thought that the whole point of crackers was the useless tat inside and the bang. I go by how pretty they are usually...

Yes, who cares what the tacky gift is. We just like the hats and the corny jokes.
We have got the Waitrose sprout cracker leftovers this year as didn't use them last year.

In a tat shop at the weekend I picked up a child's dress up kit that consisted of 8 different stick on furry moustaches for 99p so I am going to put those in the crackers and force everyone to wear them during dinner.

It's laugh a minute at Christmas in the hamster household.