These quirky, custom-made Christmas crackers are a present with a bang

For years Tanya Tyler was a hair stylist in Kloof Street. Her salon at the top of a flight of stairs was Centre Trend, full of fashionistas, wine farm princesses, party girls and a lot of people who gave off a flash of light. It had the intensity of a triage area and there was always at least one bride getting a final shine for THE DAY.

With her sister Tasha she headed up what I call the “Meisie Mafia” in Cape Town and when she got married and moved to Joburg, she left a Tanya-shaped hole in Kloof Street. But her  personality  would not lie down and she started making crackers, the kind you pull.

Check out her Instagram page, I AM CRACKERS. It will make you smile. I like the crackers with personal photographs; the one of  Tanya’s little boy,holding his pet dog twice his size, made me smile.

I AM CRACKERS makes crackers to personal specifications, from baptism to bar mitzvah to birthdays, there's a cracker just for you.

I've always been a bit let down by crackers, well, actually presents in general. One of the great disappointments in life was a present in a Rolex-shaped box, artistically wrapped, that turned out to be a chocolate crunchie, the type that sets your teeth on edge.

Somehow a cracker always brings out the great expectations my mind is riddled with - a small diamond and sapphire ring, a pair of old diamond earrings, an ivory comb, a tin spoon saved from an Asian tsunami.

I had a friend who made cracker ornaments, working after midnight, sculpting, moulding, casting and painting 90 aliens, 50 snake riders, 40 spaceships and a dinosaur.

The themed cracker has adorned many events and sparked up the glaciated syntax of Christmas. Of course, it was the Victorians, mad for the ornamental and useless, who invented crackers as party favours.

My great aunt, now in her 90s, still has an original Victorian cracker, wrapped in a flame of gold, dazzling with small stars and a scatter of stuck-on pearls. But because it has never been “pulled”, she has no idea what’s inside. I am betting on a small pair of diamond earrings. Well, I’ve always been an optimist.

My great aunt says she remembers once pulling a cracker that contained a set of false teeth. “You know there were even what we called ‘campaign’ crackers for movements like the Suffragettes and war heroes. I believe the British royal family still have special crackers made for them to this day. Shops like Fortnum and Mason and Harrods in London still sell crackers for the person who has everything. I once saw an advertisement for ‘millionaire crackers’ which contained a solid silver cigarette box.”

Fortnum and Mason, the famous London shop, used to sell re-usable crackers made out of fabric but they lacked oomph and died out.

Although I AM CRACKERS started as a small home industry, it’s grown every year. “It is a lot of work, but it’s work I love,” says Tanya. She designs the crackers, which are made out of recycled paper, and cuts them in a factory but the real difficulty is finding unique fillers.

I’ve often found the contents of a cracker disappointing, of course, but also obscure. I think there’s a whole industry turning out cracker fillers that are fairy droppings and entirely unrecognisable. Is it a whistle? Is it a pregnancy tester? Is it a key ring?

“You have no idea how much time I spend finding stuff to put inside. I’ve got it down to a fine art and can even pack in a pair of socks and gardening gloves and those marvellous waxy market bags they make locally," says Tanya.

 “I’ve always done the crackers in our family.  When we have family dos I would make special crackers, so it just grew from that. I love doing anything creative. I buy stuff for the inside all the year round; I never stop looking. I've had a few commercial businesses interested lately, so those would be custom made to reflect what they ask for.

"But in fact they are all custom made, someone having a 70th birthday, a child’s party, a baby shower, anything really.”

It’s not only that they are for special events, they ARE the special event. A friend recently had them at a small dinner party. They spark up a table, provide a bit of chatter. You have no idea how many dinner parties I’ve held where nobody talks. They are superb ice breakers and add a really festive note to a table setting. People love the personal, a picture of themselves or their dog.

So from birth to bar mitzvah to centenary celebrations, they can be customised. In the multicultural world we live in there are a lot more festivals than Christmas — Ramadan, Diwali, Easter. I lived for a while in Serbia, where the crackers were called cosaques after the Cossack soldiers who rode their horses while firing their guns in the air.

Tanya has kept the traditional and essential firework bang. 

Over the years I have collected some weird objects — one was a honey strainer (took me some research to find out what it was) — but really I would be more than happy with a small bottle of the best malt whiskey.