Name: Conkers.
Age: Introduced to the UK 409 years ago.
Appearance: Nature’s Labubu.
No, I don’t think that’s right. It is. Go and watch a TikTok of someone unboxing a conker, and you’ll almost certainly hear them call it “nature’s Labubu”.
Unboxing conkers? What on earth are you talking about? Oh wow, you really are out of the loop, aren’t you? Gen Zers are taking to TikTok to film themselves unpeeling conkers from their spiky capsules.
But why? Because of the sense of wonder! When you unbox a conker, you never know what you’re going to get. Will it be big? Will it be flat? How shiny will it be? It is like a mystery box every time!
Are Labubus big and flat and shiny? No, they’re vaguely hellish-looking dolls that have become collectible because they also come in mystery boxes.
Can someone please tell gen Z that they’re doing conkers wrong? Are they? How do you do conkers, then?
You put a shoelace through the middle of them, and try to destroy everyone else’s conkers. Wow, really? That’s bizarre.
Yeah. You’ll have a much better chance of winning if you soak the conker in vinegar overnight and then bake it like a pie. Seriously?
Seriously. And if you end up collecting too many conkers, you can hurl them across the playground and all the other kids will fight each other for them. A beautiful, natural thing like a conker, and you use it as a weapon? A weapon that comes with a long set of arcane and bewildering rules?
It’s traditional! King Charles literally just presented the World Conker Championships with a gift of 300 conkers! At least gen Z is only filming them.
Why don’t you know this? At a guess, because some schools started banning conkers as a game two decades ago, due to various health and safety fears.
The modern world never fails to amaze me. Maybe unboxing conkers just isn’t your thing. In which case, perhaps you would be better suited to some other hot new gen Z trends.
Oh really? Like what? Well, there’s this thing called knitting, and something else called pottery that I can explain to you.
We’ve had knitting and pottery for centuries! Let me guess, you boil the needles in cider and then use them to poke each other?
No! OK, calm down. I assumed that all old-people traditions involved violence in some form, after that conker thing.
I feel stressed. Take a breath. If you need me, I’ll be unboxing seeds for clicks.
Do say: “TikTok can’t stop filming conker reveals.”
Don’t say: “This is nuts.”
