category : toys

A little plastic fruit guy who you stick on the end of your pencil.

This one is the last remaining example of the many I had as a child. As far as I can remember, I had a pear, a pineapple, an orange, tomato, onion, corn-on-the-cob, a kind of purple blackberry or raspberry (which for some reason I called a grape), a long thin green one (possibly a cucumber) and I daresay others too. They were very popular in the 70′s, but I’ve yet to find a definitive guide to them anywhere on the internet (it really is the kind of thing someone, somewhere would get a bit anal about). A guy has a photo of some here.

I’ve kind of got it into my head that there were the original fruit toppers (‘grape’, pear, orange, pineapple) and also later imitations which seemed to be made of harder plastic (like this lemon), were poorer quality, and tended to be more obscure (often unrecognisable) types of fruit and vegetables. The ‘good’ ones were made of a slightly softer plastic and were much more satisfying to chew on in lessons.

Some of them might have worn little removable hats.