Kevin's Watch

A joke found inside a New Year's Eve festive popping thing:

Q: What do you get when you cross a cow, a sheep, and a goat?
A: A milky baa kid.


Seriously, what kind of joke is that? Jokes on Laffy Taffy wrappers or the sides of Happy Meals are one thing, but... It's an English manufacturer that makes the things, so I wonder if it's just some kind of Brit humor I'm not getting. Or maybe it made sense in the original Chinese? Or maybe I just drank too much last night.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkybar

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM8h7Yc3zfc&feature=related

So why would anyone think this would be funny in the US? (unless it was a mis-shipment...)

I don't think they make Christmas crackers specifically for Americans. The market for 'em here is probably too small.

I saw them all over the place a couple of years ago -- even at Safeway! -- but it appears the fad didn't catch on here.

I didn't realise that crackers aren't a universal thing. Hue of Bone's links should clarify the meaning of the joke, but it's bizarre to me that it would occur in the US.

CovenantJr wrote:I didn't realise that crackers aren't a universal thing.

They aren't. Y'all are the only ones who believe a Christmas celebration requires donning a tissue-paper crown.

And some of your ex-colonies

Edit: Oh, and we have the Milky Bar Kid too.

This is the only kind of cracker I need:

I'm 42 and I just learned about those cracker things this year. Never heard of them before.

Crackers don't matter.

Milky Crack Ho's....oh wait that's a different thread

I just thought it was a play on the Boston accent: "Milky baa kid. Pahk the cah in the Hahvahd yahd", etc.

High Lord Tolkien wrote:I'm 42 and I just learned about those cracker things this year. Never heard of them before.

Weird...Like Cj, I never realised y'all didn't have them...

--A

Jaz appears to have a kiwi accent !! Of course americans have crackers - you can buy them there so I'm not buying this whole 'never heard of them before' thing - unless you're Canadian

cracker is a racist term.

Canadians use Christmas Crackers too.
We're just to polite to tell people about them

We have crackers here -- but they are savory, not sweet. And economically depressed.

You appear to be referring to cookies, or what I thought the Brits called biscuits.

I'm sure if I hunt, I can find a link where GKC explains over the course of 20 pages how applying the term 'cracker' inappropriately will lead us away from god...

dw

Just so things are clear, they are referring to these:



From my understanding as an American, the typical ones have a bad joke, a paper crown, and pop when one pulls the two sides apart (hence the name "cracker").
Then again, I may be missing that you are making a joke Dukkha.

It's a good atempt to describe a 'typical cracker' Cagliostro, but I'm afraid falls short of the mark as any Brit will tell you. You see any self-respecting Christmas cracker HAS (and I mean HAS) to have a cheap novelty gift in it - preferably of the kind that used to be made in Hong-Kong when I was a kid, but now probably comes from Taiwan. Some up-market stores e.g. Marks and Spencers sell crackers that have proper functional gifts in them. Pen-torches, key-fobs and the like, but these are not the usual style cracker which is very definately and deliberately down market and cheap.
The joke is also traditionally always bad - it's meant to be. Don't ask me why, it just is. The best one I ever got was 'Q. What do you get if you cross Quasimodo with a cheese sandwich. A. The Lunch-pack of Notre-Dam'.

peter wrote:It's a good atempt to describe a 'typical cracker' Cagliostro, but I'm afraid falls short of the mark as any Brit will tell you. You see any self-respecting Christmas cracker HAS (and I mean HAS) to have a cheap novelty gift in it - preferably of the kind that used to be made in Hong-Kong when I was a kid, but now probably comes from Taiwan. Some up-market stores e.g. Marks and Spencers sell crackers that have proper functional gifts in them. Pen-torches, key-fobs and the like, but these are not the usual style cracker which is very definately and deliberately down market and cheap.
The joke is also traditionally always bad - it's meant to be. Don't ask me why, it just is. The best one I ever got was 'Q. What do you get if you cross Quasimodo with a cheese sandwich. A. The Lunch-pack of Notre-Dam'.

Oh yes. Christmas crackers are all about tears. Tears of embarrassment at being expected to wear the paper hat; tears of mirth at an elderly relative trying to put her paper hat on over her perm; tears of disappointment at the small , tacky picture frame or plastic spider (seriously, that's what I got this year!) found within; tears of anguish at jokes bad enough to cause internal haemorrhaging.