There's a shop in York which sells soap. It's called the Yorkshire Soap Company, strangely. I'd guess that most of their customers go in there to buy soap. I went in once and had a look around. I must point out that I didn't want any soap, I just wanted to look at soap. It's not a hobby of mine, I just like unusual things. Right next door to the soap shop in York there is a shop called 'The Imaginarium' which I also went in because it was full of weird curiosities and it had a full-sized model of the mechanical bird from the 80s version of 'Clash of the Titans' in the window. If there's a way to get me into a shop, it's that!

The soap in this soap shop serves two purposes. Firstly, it sells soap you would buy and use yourself to clean the parts that need it and secondly, it sells the type of soap you would never buy for yourself and use but you would buy and give to other people as a novelty gift for birthdays, Christmas and International Soap Day.  As you can see from the picture below, they sell a type of soap that's a bit in the middle - it's soap in the shape of a cupcake. It looks nice, smells nice and, whilst not that practical, is a nice addition to any bathroom.

There is another soap that they sell. It's not practical in the slightest and you definitely wouldn't want it in your bathroom for any reason. This soap is in the form of a goldfish in a bag. It's not been long since fairgrounds were still able to give goldfish away as prizes for hooking ducks and knocking coconuts off sticks. I don't know if it's just me but although this isn't an actual live goldfish, it still make me feel a bit uneasy.

When I saw this for the first time, I wondered what sort of person would buy this. Actually, not so much the sort of person but the reason someone would buy this. The only scenario I could think of was that horrific time of year when someone you don't like, in the office you work in (of which there are scores), suggests you all do Secret Santa.

'Yay', everyone thinks, 'having to part with money I don't have to buy useless things for people I don't like.' What could be more fun?

 

Then, you've got to spend some of your own personal time, trying to find something that won't offend the person you're buying for and, most importantly, not show how much you hope that person either gets a job at a company many many miles away from here or moves to the other end of the building, works for another team and you'll never bump into them in the staff canteen and have to make small talk over the microwave.

I get that Secret Santa is supposed to be a fun exercise in bringing people who don't normally interact in the workplace, together. It's a time to be jolly and thankful. It's a time when you have to try and smile and be pleasant to that horrible one who hates everyone who does the invoices in the corner and grumbles to herself whenever someone's chair makes a squeak.

What I'm saying is, as an introvert, there's definitely more of me that doesn't want to receive a game called 'Pie Face' for which I have no use, and have to buy a light-up bluetooth fidget spinner I saw on a dodgy market stall outside TK Maxx in town in return. In my experience, it's always revealed who is buying for who anyway so the 'secret' bit of the Secret Santa is redundant. When you hand over that Goldfish in a Bag Soap, the person on the receiving end will never shut up about it for years and even leave it on his desk as a talking point.

'That's weirdly specific', I hear you say. Yes, yes it is because it happened at a company I worked for not long ago. One of the lads had got the very fish-in-a-bag-soap as a secret santa, told everyone who came into the office about it and left it on his desk for over a year in order to point to it David Brent-style and tell the same story over and over again.

It got too much for me so one day when he was off, I took the goldfish soap and threw it in the bin. When he came back and asked where it was, I said it must have been the cleaners or something. For this reason, I will be triggered by the words 'Santa' and 'Secret' when used in the same sentence forever more.

So lets all do away with the whole charade and just get together for two minutes on the 20th December each year and exchange five pound notes - that way I can get back to playing solitaire and longing for hometime.

Merry Christmas!

Remember when bees were all 'Argh! A Bee' and you used to run around, doing a new form of empty-hand martial art to make sure it didn't sting you in the face? Well, Bees hired a PR firm which put them on mugs and tea towels and basically turned them from something that could sting you into a bath of calamine lotion to our bestest friends in the whole wide world. If you see a Bee these days, we all salute respectfully and make sure we let them get about their business whilst carrying little bottles of honey as a kind of Bee First-Aid kit, should we see one in trouble on our travels.

I think Autumn must have hired the same PR firm. Think about the way Autumn is depicted by businesses trying to sell you things. Golden crisp leaves that crunch when you stand on them, pumpkin spice flavoured anything, squirrels darting about with a look on their face which suggests they're late for a very important appointment, fuzzy sweaters that make your teeth itch, hot soup, Ed Sheeran's hair is in fashion and its Halloween! What fun!

Fake news

This simply is not true. It's only just turned October and outside its wet, cold, muddy, grey, foggy, wet, cold, dirty, raining, cold and wet. It's only been two days and I've already got Seasonal Affective Disorder. I've had to put the heating on, get the big blankets out of the airing cupboard and the hot water bottles are on stand-by. And here in the UK, they've started calling it 'Fall'. It's Autumn, not fall, and it's not a wonderful crisp season filled with the joys of Cinnamon despite what the Cinnamon marketing board may tell you. At least Winter has the decency to understand what it is, a constantly dark freezing cold period of biological inactivity. Autumn can't even make its mind up if it wants to be sunny and cold or warm and wet or both alternating every five minutes.

However, this can't continue. The PR company who have put Bees and Autumn in most people's top three favourite things ever, are going to have their work cut out of them when Spiders send them an enquiry e-mail next year asking for an image make-over.

"Yoo-hoo, Can I live in your house please?"

Calculator watch

Remember when teachers told you that you needed to learn mental arithmetic because you wouldn’t always have a calculator with you? Well, some geniuses condensed that huge cumbersome block of digits and LCD screens into something you could wear on your wrist. The problem was, you needed a microscope to find the buttons and you needed fingers the width of cocktail sticks to press them. Then, at the beginning of the 1990s, they announced that you were allowed to take calculators into exams anyway, rendering the ten quid you’d spent on your watch, entirely redundant. I wish I’d bought that transformers watch instead now.

We’ve all had the last laugh on our old Maths teachers though haven’t we; now that we have calculators on our mobile phones. Shove that in your pipe and smoke it Mrs Atherton! Mind you, I’m still never sure I’m being given the correct change in shops without using my fingers so maybe she had a point.

Phone box

Ahh, the big red British phone box with its lovely resident aroma of urine (which I’m sure they’re all installed with as standard). The handset was definitely never sanitised and the graffiti on the glass was always of a questionable nature (the phone numbers weren't always for what they said they were for - ahem). They also doubled as shelters when it was raining, as long as you had no sense of smell. You’d have lost it anyway if you stayed in there longer than five minutes.

The payphone itself was a bit of a conundrum especially when they introduced that little button you had to press to connect your call.  You had to dial the number, put your 10p coin into the slot and then when the person you were calling answered, you had to press the blue button to speak to them.  However, when you were trapped in town with just 10p left, about to make a call to arrange someone to come and pick you up to take you home, this new blue button was a menace.  You’d dial, put your 10p in, the other person would answer, you’d both say ‘hello’ eight times because you couldn’t hear each other, then you’d realise you had to press the blue button. Just as you pressed it, the other person would hang up and you’d lose your 10p.

When you finally managed to get through and talk for thirty seconds, a series of beeps would sound to let you know your money was about to run out and your call would end. This made you fit the next three minutes of conversation into the last 10 seconds. Then the dead-line noise would happen leaving both parties feeling a bit weird as you hadn’t said goodbye.  Still better than Facebook in my opinion.

Polaroid

Polaroid made a camera which was a dark-room in your pocket (if you had massive cube-shaped pockets). Its primary purpose was to take ‘instant’ photographs. You’d point the camera, press the button and it would spit out a small square photograph of a grey wall.  Then, as you watched and waited, the thing you’d taken the photograph of would appear. You were never sure whether it had finished developing because it always looked a little bit pale, grainy and like the photo was taken in the 70s regardless of the current decade. It was also a massive problem if you'd taken a photograph of a grey wall because you would never know when or even if it had developed.

Sony Discman

The idea of a portable CD player changed the world (a bit). However, the actual thing didn’t; because it was terrible. It did offer a brand-new level of clarity on the move, as well as the ability to choose tracks which the cassette-based Walkman couldn’t offer.  The biggest issue with them was the fact they weren’t actually portable. Yes, you could carry them around but any hint of movement within two miles of the player would cause the CD to jump. You definitely couldn’t walk with it in your pocket and listen to seamless music. You had to carry it on flat palms as you walked as if it was a Fabergé egg, adjusting your arm height to compensate. This was of course impractical and defeated the object.

The newer models all boasted an anti-rolling mechanism which was meant to buffer the music so that any skips could be compensated for. However, two or three skips in the buffered period would be too much for it and it would jump all over the place meaning you could listen to ABBA's entire back catalogue in under eight seconds.

Most CDs wouldn’t even play unless the player was exactly parallel to the ground. The early Discmans only ever worked by letting you take them somewhere, plonk them on a table and listen to them there. It’s probably why they took the word ‘walk’ out of the ‘Walkman’. They should have called it a ‘Sitman’.

Whistling key rings

I quickly became the most unpopular person in my house the day I got a whistling key ring. At the time, I didn’t have any keys – I just got the thing because it was the height of technology and I had to have it.  The concept was, if you’d lost your keys, you’d whistle and it would play a tune so you could locate them.  In practice, any noise above a certain frequency would set it off.  A whistle, a washing machine, the television, a sneeze or even breathing in and out would set it off.  I was told in no uncertain terms to ‘get rid of that bloody thing’ before it was thrown out of an upstairs window.

Imagine you're in Asda and you've got your little basket with a mega pack of toilet roll, a Twix and a puzzle magazine in it. You pop your goods on the conveyor belt and as the cashier beeps each thing through as you wait patiently at the end with your carrier bag made of ether, you hear a fourth beep. You look down at the things being slid towards you and notice the cashier has scanned a packet of sausages.

"I didn't put sausages on the conveyor belt", you say. "Yeah," they reply, "they're discretionary sausages. You have to ask me if you want them to be removed from your receipt - and, as I've already printed it, I'll have to shout for my supervisor to come over. They have to enter a special code to remove them. If you decide to keep them, the cost of the sausages will be divided up evenly among all us checkout people as a kind of tip. So, are you sure you want me to ask someone to remove the sausages from your bill?' You look at your receipt and where you expected to pay £10, you're now having to pay £11 - £1 for a pack of sausages you don't want. Unwelcome sausages.

Now imagine you're in any of the big chain restaurants in 2023. You order your food and drink, it arrives and you smash it into your face with glee. Then you ask for the bill. Said bill arrives and you notice it's a little more expensive than you expected. On closer inspection, you realise they've added a metaphorical packet of sausages - in this case a service charge, albeit discretionary. Ten per cent.

Now I'm aware this challenges your moral code and I'm sure most of us slip the pizza delivery person a couple of quid when they hand you the boxed Shangri-La that is the Pepperoni Passion with extra peppers but that's because we think it's nice to be nice - it's fair to tip someone who probably relies a lot on those tips to make a decent wage and what is an extra couple of quid to the bill? However, I'm sure we'd all feel different if said delivery person demanded a tip and then went as far as to tell you how much they wanted?

Fifty five pound tip please

The discretionary service charge in restaurants is on the rise I'm afraid. I first saw it last year in a branch of Byron Burger. I was confused by it - it's not a British thing; I've only lived in Britain forty or so years, so maybe it is a British thing? Baffled, I just paid the bill including the service charge, then searched my soul to try and understand how I actually felt about it.

Whether I'm right or wrong, cynical or jaded by a world being gripped by money grabbing corporations, I've come to the conclusion that the discretionary service charge in this case, is actually a 'politeness tax'. Let's say they leave tipping up to the customer (as they used to - the card machine would say 'press 1 to tip or press 2 to continue'). One in two of us might add a tip. Not that we're even sure the tips go to the service staff and not straight into the bank account of the chief executive of course.

The discretionary 10% service charge is now added to your bill in order to ensure you feel too awkward to ask for it to be removed. To prey on the politeness of us British 'don't look now' types. We're all too 'not now Gerald' and 'don't make a scene' to ask for the server to go remove the charge. Well, I'm not.

I was in the Botanist a few weeks ago and had a wonderful meal, the service was spot on too. However, when I saw the service charge on the bill, I politely asked the server to remove it. Not because I didn't want to tip but because whoever manages the Botanist's policies has realised they can make more money out of people who haven't got that much to start with by adding a charge they know people are too polite to ask for the removal of. Not me though, I was all like 'could you please remove the charge'. Turns out the server had to go and speak to a supervisor to get this removed (increasing her disgruntlement further, not only just hating me for judging her service as untippable - which wasn't what was happening). When she came back, she slammed the receipt on the table, sans service charge but with extra ruining of the experience.

Now, I can't be the only one who would rather be asked if I want to tip, which is only polite, rather than be forced to? They're literally adding sausages to the bill that I didn't want and it's somehow my fault that they have to log in with a special code and then wander all the way back over to the sausage fridge so they don't go off. Slamming a receipt on the table, to me, is their way of making sure I just pay it next time and don't make a fuss.

To me, a service charge isn't an appropriate method of getting tips out of people in British culture. We've adopted many American customs over the years but forcing sausages on people shouldn't be one of them. It's actually stopping people tipping if anything and stopping people going into restaurants where they force extra charges on you that you're kinda convinced the charges don't go to the service staff. So, next time you're in a restaurant, check the menu to see if they add a discretionary service charge. If they do - well, you'll just have to decide if the sausages were worth it.

Etch-A-Sketch

This was the precursor to the Laptop. A Laptop that could only run Microsoft Paint in black and white.  It had a monochrome screen so everything you drew looked like it was set in the 1930s.  I’m not sure what the appeal of the Etch-a-Sketch was because a pencil and a sketch pad was infinitely more enjoyable. and easier to use. and cheaper. and were already in your house.

If you weren’t used to which knob did what, or which direction went which way, you’d always twist one of the knobs in the wrong direction to make the cat you were drawing now have whiskers coming out of places it shouldn’t have whiskers.  Diagonals were a challenge too as were circles so you could forget drawing Pacman eating a bag of Doritos.  If you wanted to keep the picture you’d drawn, you either had to take a Polaroid of the screen or you had to frame it and then go out and buy another Etch-a-sketch.

To remove the picture you’d etched and sketched, in order to draw another one, you had to shake it up and down so the polystyrene beads inside smoothed out and recoated the glass with aluminium powder.  My mission was to remove all the powder from the glass by meticulously moving the needle up and down the screen, 1 nanometre at a time.

This is what happens when you’ve worn out all the actual uses for a toy; you start inventing different uses for it. Like when you’d got bored of riding your bike, you’d turn it upside down and turn the pedal with your hand to see how fast you could make the back-wheel spin. Action Man became a teaching hospital specimen and the one of the speakers from your hi-fi became a makeshift stool when you had friends over and not enough seats.

Raleigh Chopper

Made of steel, making it ridiculously heavy, with one wheel bigger than the other resulting in involuntary wheelies and the fact it wobbled when you got up any kind of speed, the Raleigh Chopper was a death trap.

Add in the fact it had a T-bar gear stick not three inches away from your groin, there were plenty of opportunities for birth control if you braked too hard.  First released in 1969, it was still a big seller in the 1980s until the BMX took over.  The film ‘Raleigh Chopper Bandits’ didn’t quite have the same ring to it but would definitely have been a better film.  The main draw for this bike was the sofa it had on the back in place of a conventional saddle.  You could fit three maybe four of your friends on the back and take them for a short weekend break in Rhyl.  The low-drop handle bars and the addition of a kick stand made you feel like a Hells Angel too; only with less tattoos (apart from the ones you got inside bubble gum which you licked and pressed onto the back of your hand).

Purple people eater

In 1958, Sheb Wooley had a song called the one eyed one horned flyin’ purple people eater. In it, there is a monster that wants to join a rock and roll band and tries to achieve this by eating purple people.  In 1982, I thought I’d never sleep again when I got a Waddingtons Purple People Eater. It was made of rubber; a creepy latex type of rubber with a face that would have given Freddie Krueger nightmares.

The premise of the game was much like that of Operation – you had to remove the people from its mouth with a pair of tweezers without touching the sides.  If you did touch it, its right eye lit up and it screamed a scream that made my soul temporarily leave my body.  There’s an online legend I read in which a young chap’s dad used to wear the rubber monster over his head and chase him around the house.  He still sleeps with both eyes open. Forty. Years. Later.

Hungry hippos

These days, the single biggest cause of repetitive strain injury is typing on keyboards. In the 80s it was Hungry Hippos giving us all carpal-tunnel syndrome. A game for up to four players, each taking their place behind a hippo with a lever on its back. Marbles are released into the playing area and each player has to smash the lever down as many times as possible in order to extend the hippo’s telescopic neck to grab as many marbles as possible. A game of luck, then, which invariably ended up with someone slamming the lever into the table so hard, the entire game was catapulted across the room into your Nan’s face whilst she was watching Metal Mickey.

If you get a chance, take a look at the commercial from the 1980s. It features four children pressing their lever lethargically for 30 seconds, looking like it’s not possible to have less fun. Then one of the kids shouts ‘I’ve won’ in the least excited voice of all time. The other three kids look relieved rather than upset that they’ve lost and they’re now allowed to leave and go wash the dishes or count the blades of grass in the back garden, you know, something less tedious.

Mr Frosty

This was the greatest lie ever told to an eight-year-old. Mr. Frosty was a plastic snowman with a blue hat and a circle cut out of his tummy. It was supposed to be an ice cone maker.  However, in the television advert, someone put an ice cube into the hole in his head, popped the hat back on (to use as a kind of plunger) and then turned the handle on his back. What came out of the hole in his tummy was perfectly crushed ice, the type slush puppies are made of.

Taken from Pingu's episode of 'Where are they now?'

In reality, the handle wouldn’t turn and would eventually snap off – either that or 1% of the ice would shave after a few minutes because it had melted.  What ice you were able to get out was then covered with syrup dispensed from a penguin’s head. The E numbers gave you the energy to turn the handle and shave the ice just like the advert!

Girl’s world

“What’s this you’ve given me for Christmas Mummy? Ooh, a disembodied head! Thanks Mum!”  Girl’s World was the slightly sexist Christmas gift for lovers of make overs and future YouTube beauty influencers. Its reason for existing was to practice your hairdressing and make-up skills; the manufacturers forgetting that each person who received one also had their own head to practice these things on, all they really needed was a much cheaper mirror and a £1.99 make-up set from Woolworths.

With the Girl’s World came some shampoo, conditioner (which seemed to work on nylon hair), rollers, a brush, a comb and some fake make-up which was designed to be washed off the dummy’s face once you were done.  The make-up consisted of eyeshadow (colours ABBA would be scared to wear), blusher and lipstick. Most people who owned one got bored with it one day, cut its hair, ruined it, put it back in the box, put it on top of the wardrobe and never played with it again.

Swingball

Ahh, the quintessentially English pastime of a gentle game of tennis.  Wearing a white jumper and shorts combo, using a fuzzy little ball, two friends gently pat the ball back and forth over a net followed by finger sandwiches and a glass of Pimms. What fun!

Then… there’s Swingball.

It was an attempt to recreate Tennis but without all the ‘having to go and get the ball which has gone over a hedge’ business. It also eradicated the difficult ‘serving’ part too, so what went wrong?  Well, for a start, the ball was attached to a rubber band connected to a spiral on top of a stick which had been hammered six feet into the ground.  It didn’t resemble tennis in the slightest.

The point of the game was to try and get the ball to spiral around the stick until it reached either the top or bottom (depending on which you preferred) before your opponent did.  What was supposed to be a relaxing game of chivalry soon descended into a frenzied pair of hyped-up children going berserk and smashing the tennis ball with more energy than either has put into the entire rest of their lives.

The ball would inevitably detach from the string after one last furious wallop of the racquet and fly through the glass of next door’s greenhouse.  The participants would all then immediately scatter and deny ever having heard of swingball, and when questioned, tell the next-door neighbour that the stick in the back garden is part of an old washing line the previous owners of the house had.

The fact we're all desensitised to everything these days and nothing seems implausible, journalists have to think up ways of getting us to click on their articles to sell us stuff with piles of adverts that pop up, interrupt the bit of screen you were reading or just freeze the page altogether for a few minutes meaning you can't scroll down to read the rest of the article or even click on the advert which has frozen your screen.

Here is a recent example I found which not only shows how over-the-top journalists have to be, but also, how literally anything is deemed newsworthy these days.  The link to the article was this :

There are three issues in that one sentence headline.  The word 'shoppers', the word 'hysterics' and the word 'awkward'.  Let's take a look at the article... (Link here (if it still works))

Shoppers have poked fun at B&M after a supplier made an unfortunate spelling error on a product sold in stores. An eagle-eyed shopper noticed the error on a set of star sign-themed mugs sold in B&M when they were out shopping.

Eagle eyed? You need the eyes of an Eagle to spot a spelling error on a cup? Really?

Posting on Reddit, they uploaded a picture of the typo.

The article was posted by one person - the headline was 'shoppers' when in fact it was one shopper. The other people who were in 'hysterics' were people reading Reddit. Now, I warn you to brace yourself. The hilarious misprint that follows could cause either a hernia or one of those laughs where snot comes out. Ready for 'hysterics'...?

The star sign "Pisces" was misspelled as "Pices" on the mug, which features a gold drawing of the constellation.

“Take a trip to your local B&M for your 'Pices' mug," they posted on Reddit, reports Mirror Online.

The dictionary defines hysterics as 'a wildly emotional and exaggerated reaction.' Nope - me neither. If you follow the link to the Mirror website, their headline was 'B&M shoppers in stitches over awkward spelling mistake on Christmas mug'.  First, it's not a Christmas mug, it's got a zodiac sign on it and secondly - 'in stitches'?? I'm picturing people wandering up the aisle in B&M, catching a glimpse of the cup, choking on their own saliva and doubling over, unable the breathe through hilarity induced convulsions. And thirdly, what's awkward about it? If they had printed your internet history on the mug and your wife saw it - yeah, that's awkward. But only because she'll see all the Christmas presents I've bought her. However, 'Pices' isn't awkward.

The Mirror continued with 'The star sign "Pisces" was spelt wrong - reading "Pices" instead - as any astrology enthusiast would be quick to notice.' Astrology enthusiast? Or just someone over the age of six who can spell? They go on 'Tickled by the spelling blunder, people fled to the comments to share their thoughts'. Fled to? You can't flee towards something, you flee from something surely? They fled from B&M to the comments section? There are people writing articles for the Mirror without a basic command of the English language.  No surprise there I suppose. They finish the article with 'It comes as some shoppers fear whether they will be able to get their Christmas gifts this year at all due to shortages brought by Brexit and a lack of lorry drivers.' The entire article was obviously there to mention Brexit, their entire narrative for everything that's gone wrong in the last 2 years, even though it had nothing at all to do with it.  Anyway, back to the Chronicle :

The blunder inspired replies from fellow Reddit users.

I hope you've recovered from the hysterical photo enough to read on... and, whilst I'm being pedantic, I might as well point out that the constellation on the cup is inaccurate (there should be three stars top left and it should be rotated to the right about twenty degrees.) Anyway -

"LOL I might get this for my mom. She's a Pisces and a teacher so it will doubly annoy her," wrote one.

LOL? Did you really LOL? If you were in hysterics or in stitches, shouldn't that have been ROFLMAO? And, 'Mom?' Yeah, an american person could well find themselves in a B&M but it sounds more like they're not one of the 'shoppers' the article accuses of finding things that aren't funny, funny - but more someone in America trawling the internet for hilarious side-splitting photographs of mild spelling mistakes.

Another said: "Got my eye on that Sagittaring mug next to it.”

I don't know how this Redditer didn't get on Mock the Week. And I now think I'm missing something. Is 'pices' a street term for bumhole? I've just checked on the dark web and apparently there are some people who call public lice 'pice'. But there's about eight of them and they're all 12 years old.

A B&M spokesperson told the Daily Star: “We’re aware of a handful of mugs with a spelling error made by our supplier.” B&M is a popular spot for bargain hunters, with shops around the North East.

If you see me lying on the floor in a B&M by the mugs, in the foetal position, shaking uncontrollably in a puddle of my own drool, don't worry, you'll know what's happened.

First up, The Range who have these gems on sale :

Along with jingling bells, Christmas carols and the smell of cinnamon, the thing I associate most with Christmas is the sound of a tractor. So what better than Santa riding into town on a steam tractor with a variety of colourful lights and an ornament that 'Makes a tractor sound'. That'll be lovely on Christmas day as your centrepiece on the dining table.

Not only is this animal, native to South America, dressed in a hat and scarf (when it's actually covered in a natural hat and scarf known as wool) but it's being dragged into the Christmas genre against its will. It doesn't want anything to do with Christmas. Look at its face.

All of Santa's Reindeer are dead and finally, planes have been invented. Much more reliable and faster than Reindeer, the downside is that Santa is now contributing to climate change. The fact this plane has no roof isn't very practical for trips to and from the North Pole. But how will he deliver the presents if there's nowhere to land?

Santa's training with the paratroopers has finally paid off as he just parachutes into your chimney. He's made of acrylic too so if you've left your fire on he's in trouble. Not sure how he's meant to get back up into the plane which I assume he's left on autopilot?  Hang on... sold out? Of course it is! They just flew off the shelves  (or whatever the internet equivalent is).

Nothing Christmassy about a bear or a Penny-Farthing I hear you say. Hang on - just put some totally out of perspective Christmas  trees around it and boom, you've got a Christmas bear on a bike. An absolutely massive bike.

This is just getting ridiculous now. How do you make an animal that lived 90 million years before Christmas was invented, Christmassy? Make it green and attach lights to it's torso so it looks like a Christmas tree, pop a Santa hat on it's head, make it hold a garland saying 'Tree Rex' and make it play Christmas music when you press it's foot. We'll never get to see a real T-Rex so who knows, maybe this is what they looked like?

I see what they've done here. Everyone associates snow with Christmas so naturally, any animal who also lives where it's snowing is automatically classed as a Christmas animal. No. A Polar Bear has nothing to do with Christmas - bar the fact they live in the same continent as Santa. So do Walruses but they're no more or less Christmassy than a Polar Bear!  However, this one is playing the saxophone which decreases its Christmas factor by at least 28%  Saxophones aren't Christmassy even if you get one for Christmas.

Penguins don't live in the North Pole so one couldn't have possibly even met Santa let alone allow themselves to be embroiled in this winter festival built around a baby being born in a stable in Palestine. Still, pop a Santa hat on anything and you can call it a Christmas decoration...

They're not even trying now. What is a Scandi bird? Scandinavian bird? Only if Santa does actually live in Lapland (Finland - Scandinavia) would this be relevant but again, not every animal that lives in Lapland is Christmassy. Wolverines live in Lapland. I've never seen Hugh Jackman in a Christmas film.

Sometimes you don't even need to pop a santa hat on something, just sprinkle snow on it and it becomes an instant Christmassy decoration. There's a review on this which says : "This ornament is plenty good enough to look great at Christmas and bring a smile to your face every time you look at him." You can't argue with that like. It's listed as 'Orange' too, but it's not. I used to get an orange in my Christmas stocking so maybe this is how they've tried to tie it in?

Not Christmas. This is from Next - I wonder what they're going to do next year? Put a Santa Hat on a Tarantula? Sprinkle snow on a crab? Dress a snake up as Jesus?

Again from Next - how Christmassy, some severed elf heads to hang from your bony featureless tree of death

From Roov.com, there's nothing better than the gift of a Christmas Lobster and at a very affordable £9.49, you can hang one in every room!

and finally, TK Maxx have come up with an alternative to Turkey this year. Complete with a pair of earmuffs, the only way to tie Ostriches in with Christmas is to make them completely white, give them built-up shoes and a silver beak.  That's it, you've completely ruined christmas for everyone. I hope you're happy.