It’s the question soon to be asked at every table in Britain “Shall we pull the crackers before, or after dinner?”
This curious tradition of pulling on a roll of coloured paper was invented in London 165 years ago by Tom Smith.
Starting work at an ornamental confectioner’s Tom would experiment on producing more sophisticated designs of wedding cake decorations than was being sold by his employers. It wasn’t long before he branched out on his own setting up a business in Goswell Road producing confectionery products. Travelling widely in 1840 on a trip to Paris he discovered the ‘’Bon Bon’, a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of tissue paper. This simple confection which proved popular in London at Christmas would evolve into the cracker we know today.
His next improvement to the French ‘Bon Bon’ was to wrap a small love motto inside the tissue paper as a means to extend the sale of the sweet beyond Christmas.
It was the crackle of a wood fire that gave Tom the idea of turning, what was essentially a love token, into something which would appeal to a wider buying public.
After much experimentation, he perfected a means to produce a bang when opening the ‘Bon Bon’. Orders flooded in and the shape was refined to the one we would recognise today, renamed a ‘’cosaque’ the sweet was replaced with a surprise gift.
To fight overseas competition eight designs of cracker were produced and orders flooded in necessitating a move from Goswell Road to larger premises in Finsbury Square, where incredibly the factory remained until 1953.
It was in Finsbury Square that Tom’s son Walter had a drinking fountain erected in memory of his mother – Mary. Although in need of a good clean the fountain can still be seen today in the square.
Crackers were produced for specific occasions: Tutankhamen, war heroes, Charlie Chaplin, the Coronation.
Today they manufacture Christmas crackers in Norwich, and the simple almond sweet had been replaced by corny jokes and puns, metal puzzles and a paper hat that only your Dad would want to wear at the Festive dinner table.
A version of this post was published by CabbieBlog on 18th December 2012
With its 500 white lights and central location, the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is one of the most iconic Yuletide symbols for the festive season. Since 1947 the giant Norway spruce has been given annually as a gift from the Norwegian government to thank the British nation for their role in providing a safe haven for King Haakon VII and their government in exile, as well as the small matter of eradicating the Nazis from their country.
What few realise is the inordinate care that the Norwegians take to grow the ‘perfect’ tree. It takes 15 years for your Christmas tree to grow to 6ft to display in your home. For Trafalgar Square’s tree 120 years are needed to reach the optimal height.
A group of eight to ten possible trees are selected from forests outside Oslo. These then undergo special preparation for up to eight years. The surrounding trees are cut down so the chosen ones get enough light. The trees are fertilised to help establish the dark green colour and trimmed to the correct shape.
Then finally, when a tree is to be shipped, the best is selected. For the past decade this we vision has been made by Jon Christiansen, he perfect name for Christmas and the chief city forester for Oslo City Council. The selected tree between 70ft and 75ft is then named ‘The Queen of the Forest’.
During the felling Oslo’s mayor, the Mayor of Westminster Council, the British Ambassador to Norway and local schoolchildren are in attendance.
Carefully moving such a heavy and delicate object is undertaken by truck to Oslo, thence by DFDS Seaways, a Danish freight line and finally by a low loader from the embarkation port to Trafalgar Square. Unloaded and positioned by hydraulic crane, then secured by guy ropes it stands erect outside the National Gallery.
On 3rd December each year, the honour of turning on the lights is usually given to a member of the Norwegian Royal Family.
Photo: Trafalgar Square – Christmas Eve 2011 Peter Trimming (CC BY 2.0)
A version of this post was published by CabbieBlog on 2nd December 2016
With its 500 white lights and central location the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is one of the most iconic Yuletide symbols for the festive season. Since 1947 the giant Norway spruce has been given annually as a gift from the Norwegian government to thank the British nation for their role in providing a safe haven for King Haakon VII and their government in exile, as well as the small matter of eradicating the Nazis from their country.
[W]hat few realise is the inordinate care that the Norwegians take to grow the ‘perfect’ tree. It takes 15 years for your Christmas tree to grow to 6ft to display in your home. For Trafalgar Square’s tree 120 years are needed to reach the optimal height.
A group of eight to ten possible trees are selected from forests outside Oslo. These then undergo special preparation for up to eight years. The surrounding trees are cut down so the chosen ones get enough light. The trees are fertilised to help establish the dark green colour and trimmed to the correct shape.
Then finally, when a tree is to be shipped, the best is selected. For the past decade this we vision has been made by Jon Christiansen, he perfect name for Christmas and the chief city forester for Oslo City Council. The selected tree between 70ft and 75ft is then named ‘The Queen of the Forest’.
During the felling Oslo’s mayor, the Mayor of Westminster Council, the British Ambassador to Norway and local schoolchildren are in attendance.
Carefully moving such a heavy and delicate object is undertaken by truck to Oslo, thence by DFDS Seaways, a Danish freight line and finally by low loader from the embarkation port to Trafalgar Square. Unloaded and positioned by hydraulic crane, then secured by guy ropes it stands erect outside the National Gallery.
On 3rd December each year the honour of turning on the lights is usually given to a member of the Norwegian Royal Family.
Photo: Trafalgar Square – Christmas Eve 2011 Peter Trimming (CC BY 2.0)
The idea
On a quiet dark Tuesday February night in 1999, taxi driver Derek Carroll sat twelfth on the rank reading one of his many books on Edinburgh history.
With plenty of time to dream, Derek started thinking how it might be possible to create a trivia board game, where all the questions could be based on one City.
[T]he answer was obvious; create the game around the working life of a taxi driver. ‘The better your local knowledge, the better the tips, the more you earn’. Picking up an A4 sheet of paper, the journey began . . .
Development and research
Over the next 18 months, questions were researched and written, thousands of dice were thrown, sacrifices were made, proto-types were produced, contact was made with buyers, manufacturers of the game, and playing pieces were sourced.
The early years
Eventually, on the 5th of December 2000 the Edinburgh Taxi Board Game was launched. With a very limited marketing budget, Taxi! went on sale in just 7 stores, and with only 19 shopping days until Christmas, the pressure was on. Derek managed to secure a complete window display in the prestigious Jenners Department Store on Princes Street, Edinburgh, he also received great support from both John Lewis and Debenhams. In all these stores Taxi! out-sold Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit that Christmas.
Two years later and with the Glasgow edition now launched, Taxi was on sale in over 40 stores throughout Central Scotland, achieving significant retail sales. This could never have been achieved without the help and support given to Derek by the retail staff in all stores that stocked the Taxi Game.
The next stage
Piloting Taxi! in local areas enabled Derek to monitor the reaction from both store managers and customers alike. Based on these findings a new London edition was planned. During this time a number of companies showed a keen interest to be involved in developing future editions. A US based global games company were keen to buy the rights for the game and a deal was almost done when the global financial crisis started to bite in 2007 and all these plans were put on hold.
Having gotten so close to securing the ‘big deal’ Derek became disillusioned with the whole process and the idea lay dormant for a number of years.
However a chance meeting in late 2014, resulted in the idea being revisited. A new team of investors with Finance, Sales and Marketing experience, was put in place and with the board game market now buoyant, the decision has been taken to launch the new London edition.
Launching the London Taxi! board game
A prototype of the London game was shown at the London Toy Fair, and based on the interest and enthusiasm received from retail buyers the decision was made to progress to manufacturing the first batch of the London Taxi! board game. At the same time a promotional video was commissioned to create interest in advance of the game hitting the shops.
After months of hard work, the game was finally available to retailers in early August 2015. Initial orders have been good. The London Taxi trade have also greeted the product with great enthusiasm with articles, competitions and readers offers in all the main trade papers/magazines. There is also a forthcoming podcast for London Taxi Radio in the pipeline.
The future
Taxi! is once again attracting the attention of global games distributors and we are close to signing a UK distribution deal with further discussions ongoing about similar arrangements in the US and China.
In 2016 with professional backers and the right team in-place, Taxi! is looking forward to becoming one of the world’s top selling board games. As well as the new London edition being available for sale in stores from August 2015, plans are being finalised to create versions of Taxi! for other major worldwide cities.
Available on Amazon
The London Taxi! board game is available to purchase on Amazon and the readers of CabbieBlog can receive a £3 discount by using the following code GQFX6LWM at the checkout.
The Taxi! Journey Continues, It’s Been Some Fare!
This is a Guest Post. CabbieBlog has not received payment for publishing this article but will receive a small payment through Skimlinks should you buy the London Taxi Board Game using the above link. All links here conform with guidelines set out in Write a Post.
It’s the question soon to be asked at every table in Britain “Shall we pull the crackers before, or after dinner?”
This curious tradition of pulling on a roll of coloured paper was invented in London 165 years ago by Tom Smith.
Starting work at an ornamental confectioners Tom would experiment on producing more sophisticated designs of wedding cake decorations than was being sold by his employers. It wasn’t long before he branched out on his own setting up business in Goswell Road producing confectionery products. Travelling widely in 1840 on a trip to Paris he discovered the ‘’Bon Bon’, a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of tissue paper. This simple confection which proved popular in London at Christmas would evolve into the cracker we know today.
[H]is next improvement to the French ‘Bon Bon’ was to wrap a small love motto inside the tissue paper as a means to extend the sale of the sweet beyond Christmas.
It was the crackle of a wood fire that gave Tom the idea of turning, what was essentially a love token, into something which would appeal to a wider buying public.
After much experimentation he perfected a means to produce a bang when opening the ‘Bon Bon’. Orders flooded in and the shape was refined to the one we would recognise today, renamed a ‘’cosaque’ the sweet was replaced with a surprise gift.
To fight overseas competition eight designs of cracker were produced and orders flooded in necessitating a move from Goswell Road to larger premises in Finsbury Square, where incredibly the factory remained until 1953.
It was in Finsbury Square that Tom’s son Walter had a drinking fountain erected in memory of his mother – Mary. Although in need of a good clean the fountain can still be seen today in the square.
Crackers were produced for specific occasions: Tutankhamen, war heroes, Charlie Chaplin, the Coronation.
Today they manufacture Christmas crackers in Norwich, and the simple almond sweet had been replaced by corny jokes and puns, metal puzzles and a paper hat that only your Dad would want to wear at the Festive dinner table.
It was in Finsbury Square that Tom’s son Walter had a drinking fountain erected in memory of his mother – Mary. Although in need of a good clean the fountain can still be seen today in the square.
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