When I was in my third year of primary school in the UK (I’d be around seven), one of those crazes which captures kids’ imaginations from time to time came along. These were the first ‘pencil toppers’, little decorations that you put on the top of pencils and pens. Nowadays these are common but this was the first time I’d seen them, anyway.
The pencil toppers which were really popular were The Munch Bunch, characters from a popular children’s cartoon series of the time (early 1980s). These were anthropomorphised fruit and veg. As I write about this now, I realise they don’t sound that exciting and they probably weren’t – but in those pre-internet days, it didn’t take a lot to make us kids happy!