Here’s the surprise: Tom Smith’s original crackers didn’t have paper hats or jokes. They were just a tube of sweets and a pop. The joke—a terrible, groan-worthy pun—was invented later by Tom’s son, Walter Smith, who thought the crackers needed more “fun.”
Walter also added the tissue-paper crown, allegedly inspired by the hats worn at coronations. He figured everyone wanted to feel like a king or queen for ten seconds, even if the hat barely stayed on your head. And the plastic fish? That was an accident—someone dropped a toy factory shipment in a vat of lime-green dye, and we’ve never recovered.
By the 1900s, the cracker had evolved into its modern form: a loud bang, a flimsy hat, a hopeless joke, and a tiny toy you’ll lose in five minutes. Tom Smith’s company still makes them today, by the way—they’ve sold over 50 million.
The Nuance of “Who Really Invented It?”
Of course, history is never that tidy. Some argue that a rival baker named John Wren also claimed to have invented the cracker in the 1850s. There’s even a story that a French confectioner had a similar product in the 1830s—but he called it a “favor,” and it didn’t make a sound.
The truth is, Tom Smith was the first to patent the “Explosive Bon-Bon” in 1847, but his early versions were a hot mess. It took him a decade to perfect the snap. So, credit goes to Tom for the idea, and to his son Walter for making it bearable—or at least hilariously annoying.
The Londoner who invented Christmas crackers whose company still
And let’s not forget the unsung hero: the factory worker who had to sit and glue thousands of tiny joke slips by hand. Those poor souls probably invented the first “cracker face-palm.”
