If people just designed things right to begin with… #3 – Christmas Cracker Crowns

Okay, so there are a lot of things that have bugged me for a long time, and I have finally decided to take action, and tell the world to get its crap together, by turning my “If people just designed it right to begin with” posts into a proper ongoing series. So, here goes…

I have a big head.

This doesn’t bother me. In fact, it is very handy, because my big head is where I keep my big brain.

To be more specific, my wife tells me that I have a “deep head”, because she says that my head looks normal in width and height, i.e. my face doesn’t look over-large, however the circumference of my head is still pretty large.

So, on account of this largeness of cranium, most hats don’t fit well. “one size fits all” caps are always adjusted to the very last couple of clicky-connector things (not sure what they are called), or with only a meager centimeter of velco overlap to hold it onto my head. That’s not to big a deal, but where it becomes an issue is at christmas time, when we open the crackers.

The paper crowns don’t fit.

It ends with me either perching the crown on top of my hat (not actually sitting down atop my ears as it rightly should), or I pull it down and end up tearing it… #ChristmasEpisiotomy

Now, the answer is obvious. in fact, there are a number of answers. My first instinct was “why the hell do they go for the “one size fits all” approach anyway. the crowns are too large for the kids, and too small for me; there’s only a small middle section of the bell curve\hoi poloi whom the crowns fit. Why don’t they take the sensible approach of making christmas cracker sets that include, for every set of 6 crackers, 2 small, 2 medium, and 2 large crowns. Surely that would ensure that for most typical gatherings, everyone gets a crown that fits well enough?

But that isn’t the right answer, it is? No, of course not. The correct answer is as follows (with prototype photos at the bottom of this post):

1. the crown shall not be provided as a complete circle, it shall instead be a straight piece of folded paper, with a flat bottom and pointy top, that is long enough to completely encircle the head of even the 99.5th percentile of the “head bigness” graph.
2. The joke shall no longer be a simple piece of printed paper, it shall be on a sticker.
3. The joke shall actually be funny; alternatively, the sticker can just have a christmas themed picture on it, and do away with the joke altogether.
4. To make your crown, you simply wrap the paper around your head, find the correct amount of overlap to suit your skull and hairdo, then use the sticker to stick the end in place. Voila, a perfectly fitting paper crown.

Honestly, that wasn’t so hard, was it? So why have we been doing it wrong all this time?

Actually, that isn’t even the right answer is it? It answers the crown problem, but not the deeper underlying issue: Christmas crackers are a complete waste of paper, cardboard, and plastic. It’s not very environmentally friendly, and I think the only reason that we like them so much is because we all acknowledge how terrible they are in every respect. the crowns are terrible, the toys are lousy, and the jokes are even worse. How about we just don’t… for the planet’s sake.