Practical Jokes and Novelties

jumping beans
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

As a 10-12 year old I was obsessed with a shop much like this which I passed on the bus to school in the mornings with the idea that it would be full of hilarious practical jokes. When I finally went there I found it mainly to be filled with paper decorations, and novelty fans.

I did, finally get hold of a bunch of manufactured practical jokes, which I applied with mixed results.

Stink Bombs: truly stinky -- but if you let them off in the school bogs you set off not a wave of hilarity, but a grim faced inquisition. Result: scary failure.

Disappearing Ink: doesn't disappear fast enough to avoid being kicked for splashing ink on fellow students. Result: ouch.

Snow-from-burning-cigarette pellets: These were little white pills that you put on the end of a burning cigarette at which point a blizzard of white stuff floated around the room. It worked pretty well, but nobody in their right mind would allow a 12 year old boy near a burning cigarette with small white pills, so the practical applications were limited. I did successfully do this with my own cigarette on the top of a double decker bus causing everybody to rush around opening windows and looking for the source of the contaminant. In the confusion nobody told me off for smoking or nicked my cigarettes. Result: partial success.

Exploding Cigarettes: you were supposed to slip these little metal things into the end of a cigarette. But to do so resulted in horrible mangling the cigarettes, which caused far too much suspicion for them to be actually smoked. Still the metal things made some satisfying small explosions when thrown in a bonfire. Result: small success, not worth the money.

Joy Buzzers were a disapointment, but I was never taken in by X-ray Specs.