Every year, just before people around Britain begin eating Christmas dinner, they pull these big, colourful "sweets" open with a bang. Inside are gifts, paper hats and jokes.
In the 1840s, Tom Smith, a London confectioner, adapted French bon-bons: sugared almonds inside a twist of tissue paper. He created a cardboard tube wrapped in colourful paper and added a love motto. The magic was the loud "crack" heard when two strips of paper coated in silver fulminate were pulled apart. He patented his creation and, in 1861, Bangs of Expectation, soon known as "crackers", went on sale.
Smith's son Walter put paper hats and small gifts into the crackers. By the 1890s, crackers were being made in a London factory employing 2,000 workers.
Crackers are a festive tradition in households across Britain. They have hardly changed in the past 100 years - except that the mottoes were replaced by jokes in the 1930s. The Royal Family is known to have used the luxury Tom Smith brand since 1906.