In those days, Kinder Eggs were a miracle of reverse engineering. Whereas today many toys are already born fully assembled or only require three or four steps to complete, in the early 1980s they were quite different. Kinder Egg toys of over thirty years ago were intricate combinations of many parts and this meant that the completed item was often much larger than the egg itself.
World War One planes, red tractors and miniature architectural fantasies proudly lined the shelves of Olga's shop. To step into this world was to dispense with the question of what was inside these eggs. They had all been opened already.
The shop was down a country lane and it took me about fifteen minutes to reach it from where I was staying in my school holidays. Reader, one day Olga gave me her entire collection of Kinder Egg toys shortly before I was to depart back to London .
Armed with this wonderful gift, I was able to begin my researches into the origins of Kinder Eggs. On the train and boat home, I laid out the not-so-tiny models on any surface I could find: luminous soldiers, incredible monsters and fanciful representations of farmyard animals. Bizarrely, I was not assembling these plastic treasures, but avoiding taking them apart for fear of not being able to put them back together.
What committee of deranged and exact engineers had drawn up these designs. Would I ever know?
The years passed and, if anything, my collection shrunk. How could I justify the purchase of these creations as I entered my teenage years? My twenties only justified their acquisition in fitful bursts of nostalgia.
Then the day arrived. A few years ago, Kinder ran a competition. The prize was a trip to the center of chocolate creativity, probably somewhere in Germany. I immediately bought ten thousand eggs. This was an opportunity not to be missed.
By now the Kinder Toy had evolved to a solid lump. Maybe a brightly painted hippo or three-toed sloth. The corner of my room in central London began to grow into a huge pyramid of them. I regularly brought out bags of recycling containing only white and orange silver foil or yellow plastic pods. I became known as the egg man of Kings Cross.
Where was the winning ticket? I began to accept that I may never have purchased it.
And then, I will remember the toy for ever, there it was contained along with a wildly anthropomorphised mouse or rat. I was soon on my way to Bremen or Bruges.
Only I never made it this far. At the airport I was met by a man in dark glasses, whose own features had the mark of a Kinder creation. We drove silently to a warehouse in Bromley. The interior air had a sickly sweet smell and I was a led to a round table which was large enough but dwarfed in the cavernous surroundings it found itself in.
Around the table sat a collection of what I can only describe as geniuses. The first genius would say a word such as cat or alligator. The next would say "a cat in an orange jumper" or some such. The next would pause and reflect and then say "the same cat, but on a skateboard". And so it would go on, long into the afternoon.
I wish I could tell you all the wondrous things I heard and saw that day, but the terms and conditions of the competition forbid it. Suffice to say, we are all in very good hands with Kinder and no organisation could be more trusted with the design and execution of what can be made to fit inside small chocolate eggs.
My experiences freed me of the compulsion to purchase Kinder Eggs, but recently they have been selling two for a pound in Tescos. It was a cold and unforgiving night. The orange light from the street lamps reflected back off the road. I got a duck-billed platypus and a sports car. Only miniature ones of course, although with the money I have spent on Kinder Eggs, I could have bought both by now. In my mind's eye, I still travel down the country lane to the sweet shop where the philosophy of wonder could not have come to a kinder beginning.
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