Do novelties get the better of us?

As a child of the 1990s, Colin the Caterpillar was the staple cake for nearly every children’s birthday party I attended.

Indeed, the M&S chocolate sponge roll, filled with buttercream and covered in milk chocolate with its white-chocolate face and feet does hold a certain nostalgia factor for me, remembering how the birthday boy or girl always got first dibs on the face.

Although I’ve been known to pick up a £7.50 Colin for a friend’s twenty-something birthday, I’m not sure I’d be willing to shell out £50 for him and another £50 for his missus, even if they are ten times the size of the original and, combined, can feed up to 80 people.

£50 Each?? I love you Colin The Caterpillar but you may just be out of my league. @marksandspencer #weddingcake #wedding https://t.co/D7mJyW8j9x

— weird marketing (@sarah_weird) February 2, 2017

Colin the Caterpillar

Now, I’ll admit that I know little of what’s a reasonable price to pay for a wedding cake.

But I was a little surprised when my Facebook feed was instantly filled by excited brides-to-be claiming that this new novelty cake would be making an appearance at their weddings.

After quizzing one of them, I’ve since discovered that traditional tiered cakes, designed to stuff your guests with after a day of eating and drinking, can come with a fairly high price tag.

And I’ve been reliably informed that that price is dependent on who makes it (a professional baker or a supermarket) and what type of cake it is.

So, it turns out that Colin and Connie would be a budget option, but when you consider you can buy a giant normal Colin for £35, £50 still seems steep just because he’s wearing a chocolate top-hat..

At least, it seems that way to me.

Novelty factor

I had a similar feeling when I visited the Making of Harry Potter tour at the Warner Bros Studios.

I grew up reading all about the exploits of the boy wizard at Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, so I naturally wanted to sample the infamous ‘Butterbeer’ halfway through the tour.

An ordinary glass of it wasn’t cheap (a couple of quid, if I remember rightly), but when you bought the special stein to drink it from, it came to something like a tenner.

And from what I could see, this was the default choice for near enough every attendee. Plus, it was so sickly sweet that barely any of them could finish it!

Now you could argue that such novelties make a nice souvenir for your visit or even that the Colin and Connie wedding cake reflects your ‘young-at-heart’ relationship, but to me it just feels that we end up paying a premium for what is a novelty.

Do you think novelties, such as Colin and Connie, get the better of us? Or do you see them as a bit of fun and the price tag shouldn’t matter?