Blog Archives
Busted for Kinder Surprise eggs
Before you attempt to head into the U.S. carrying Kinder Surprise eggs from the U.K., beware! The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seized about 25,000 Kinder Surprise eggs in 2010 and reissued the warning that Kinder eggs are banned (due to the non-edible prize inside each egg). Rumor has it that if a Kinder egg is seized by customs, you can be fined for $2,500!
If you’ve never had a Kinder Surprise egg, they are quite fun little toys (i.e. cars, characters, even stamp rings) tucked inside a half milk chocolate and half white chocolate shell of an egg. You never know what you’re going to get! Nearly 30 billion have been sold worldwide.
And check out the Americanized version of the Kinder Surprise: The Choco Treasure! It launched last month.
Also, here are the top 10 items not to bring back from your international holiday.
The world’s first watch cat is British
The toys in the warehouse of UK-based toy company Bandai are now safely being protected by Millie the cat. The story has been reported in several UK newspapers and I thought it was some sort of April Fools-style joke, but no. Behold, Millie! She’s not only the security detail at Bandai but ridiculously photogenic and looks adorable in cat clothes.
UK-based Bandai has employed the world’s first watch cat. Photo credit on all photos: Metro UK
Patrolling at night.
She’s apparently quite happy to patrol at night and is being paid in cat food and fish. Who needs a watch dog, when you can have Millie? Added bonus: She’s got nine lives.
I’m sure it will be turned into a Hollywood blockbuster in no time.
(Apologies for the cheese factor in this story…)
London in a Bag
My MIL sent over this sweet wooden collection called “London in a Bag” last week for the kids and they have loved it. The river has been the thing they’ve been fighting over – who knew the Thames would be so popular? I say there’s plenty of London to go around from the mini version of the London Eye to the Tower Bridge. I’ve been trying to locate it online and there are other versions of the London in a Bag but nothing quite like this collection…
The Pluralization of Lego
This weekend Lego KidsFest will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina. You can bet there will be a lot of talk about Legos there.
This weekend, we’ve been invited to a friend’s son’s 6th birthday party and when I asked my friend what her son might like for a toy, she told me that he was “really into Legos.”
Legos.
Yes, she pluralized it. It might just be the eighth deadly sin in Britain.
I think I speak for all Americans – every single, red-blooded one – when I say that we all pluralize Lego. We can’t help ourselves. We know it’s a brand name. We know you need more than one block to properly play Lego. So it just makes sense to us to add that s.
And to be fair, we don’t just do it with Lego. We do it with Barbie and with G.I. Joe and My Little Pony. We add s’s to every one of them.
But for some reason, the Lego thing in Britain is a thing. It’s always referred to as Lego, which is actually the correct pluralization of Lego. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a handful of them or a giant British army of them.
It’s like the way moose is the plural of moose. Or sheep is the plural of sheep. Or deer is the plural of deer. Americans just never got the memo.
Do you say Lego or Legos?
BRITRISH.COM 