Within my best Dyson friends, I play a game where I hide a potato and see how long it takes someone to find it
Approach
Pick a potato
Find a hiding spot they will never think about it
Hide potato
???
Get caught or turn myself in (as potato has probably started to rot and become a biohazard)
Unsuspectingly repeat
Fun with Friends
Year
Role
Team
2021 –
Main instigator
NPI New Concepts
1. How it all started
Me: “That’s shabu shabu, not hotpot… you ignorant potato!”
Me (playfully) scolding Friend A getting mixed up between the differences between the two very similar cuisines
2. The First Potato
Friend A: “…There is a potato on my desk”
To add salt to the wound, I put a potato on Friend A’s desk the next day
3. Collateral Damage
Friend B: “WHY IS THERE A POTATO ON MY DESK?” (“It’s actually a really comfy shape to hold”)
(The story goes) Friend A puts the potato on Friend B because what are friends for?
“it’s a good peace offering – there’s no beef” – Friend B
3. Escalation
Friend B hides potato in my cake experiments
One of these blocks has a potato wrapped in a cardboard tube and foil.
I only find out while unveiling the latest cake experiment to the team and immediately am impressed and enraged.
3. Indoor Snowball
Retaliation in the form of a snowball
Friend B has an important project review over lunch Meanwhile, we happened to have bought a container of brownies to share with the team and finished it (without friend B – woops).
It suddenly snowed that lunch time (very rare for this part of the UK) and I decided to get her a coffee and put a snowball in the brownie container.
(I later gave her snacks to make up for this brutal betrayal)
3. Easter Hijinks
“Aww that’s so sweet! And it’s so big and heavy!”
Friend A upon accepting potato filled egg
Pretty self explanatory : Put the biggest egg in an Easter Egg
Design Notes:
I was surprisingly lucky that ALDI were selling non-foil wrapped eggs this year
I bought a third egg to sacrifice for manufacturing – it ended up being used as a glue filler as this chocolate seemed quite brittle
Replacing the tape ‘safety seal’ was paramount to the experience of not getting caught
Friend B didn’t admit she had been potatoed for several months – I was terrified that the potato had started to grow and become biohazardous. Turns out she was fuming she had been potato-ed and was scheming for retaliation over the last 4 months as she had opened it in front of her friends and a potato fell out of the box.
3. Return from COVID
“Something to welcome your sense of taste back to the office”
I do like juxtapositions – there’s something nice about putting a potato with potato products
Design Notes:
The bottom of the pringles can does lend itself to being opened with a can opener. However sealing it shut was difficult – I was lucky friend A didn’t look at the bottom.
The paper-foil seal remained intact – which really sealed the deal
4. Housewarming Candle
“Have you put a candle in this?” “Do you know how expensive these candles are??” “OK fair – thanks! It smells great”
A housewarming party got me excited to up my game by putting a potato in a candle.
Design Notes:
Candle exterior painting is not friendly with paint – bain marie-ing the wax out meant I needed to strip and/or repair some of the exterior stickers
Wax expansion/contraction during cool down introduces some weird artifacts but seemed to be solved with some heat-gunning
Practising with a second candle would’ve helped educate me with lessons – will do that next time
Friend A started using this candle and was very having the candle exposed before I was unfairly outed by Friend B (who I had ‘goosed’ (the evolution of the potato)). I bought Friend A a new Yankee Candle and wonder where the potato candle was.
4a. The Decoy
“I’ve put a potato in here to prank all your other guests”
This was a simple potato for people who didn’t know that the potato game exist and draw attention away from the candle potato.
Design Notes:
Using adhesive tape on an oily plastic surface did not work.
Heat sealing with an iron worked really well
The potato falls out very quickly against a repaired heat seal – the bag was not designed to retain a solid potato inside
Snacking on spare crisps that had to be taken out to offset a potato in the bag makes for a wonderful afternoon snack
Where to from here?
Score: 4 : 2 : 1
This isn’t the end of the game – but escalation and lateral thinking is the new game here.
I absolutely love the wholesomeness of seeing friends seeing what’s just happened and just clicked – it all comes from love (because who has time and effort to have such escalating hijinks?)
Moving forward, it’s probably less about a physical potato but news/information delivered in really special and unexpected ways.
In saying that, one of them has just started a potato patch… maybe the war has just started!
