Advent Calendar Update 1

This year I have purchased an 'In The Night Garden' chocolate advent calendar. For those of you who aren't familiar with 'In The Night Garden', it's a BBC children's television series, particularly aimed at babies and preschool children, although one suspects most of its audience is in fact made up of students with too much time on their hands between lectures. Featuring a mixture of live action, puppetry and computer animation it has a very similar visual style to Teletubbies. The similarities don't end there though. Characters have similarly ridiculous names that were presumably dreamed up in a production meeting where Mary Jane was highly influential but strangely not acknowledged in the show's credits.

Characters include Iggle Piggle, Upsy Daisy and my personal favourite, Makka Pakka. Makka Pakka is a small, round cream coloured...um...being, who enjoys stacking smooth stones, repeating his name (another idea "borrowed" from Teletubbies) and washing things, especially faces. However he appears to have three piles of excrement on his head and would be well-advised to wash himself before others. Disappointingly my calendar does not feature Makka Pakka on the front. Perhaps because the sight of the poo-headed one on the box was considered as being slightly off-putting when devouring the "delicious" chocolate inside. On the plus side, there is a fun game on the reverse where you have to match the characters to their shadows. Oddly the shadows are blue but maybe that's the way things are 'In The Night Garden'. Surely if it is a 'night garden' however, the characters shouldn't have shadows at all. Just a thought.

Anyway, I will be posting the chocolates and pictures I uncover each day until Christmas...and then for the days after that until NEW YEARS!!!! Yes that's right, this amazing calendar includes cardboard-infused chocolate treats all the way until New Years day. Value for money or what?

Day 1: A candle with lit flame in old-style holder. Like the one Wee Willy Winky ran through the town with. No picture. Just a poorly moulded chocolate. A slightly disappointing start.

Day 2: A man/ woman/ witch with a big nose wearing a Santa hat. This is the most disturbing advent chocolate I have ever eaten.