It always points due somewhere!

The magnetic compass has only recently been rendered slightly less magical by GPS systems in mobile phones. I can remember when I was a mere slip of a lad, that the 'shoes to have' came equipped with a compass in the heel, and they had animal footprints instead of tread patterns. (They were simpler, less cynical and less commercial times back then... although if you search the internet for them, you will find that they were made in the 1960s by Clarks and called 'Wayfinders', or 'Trackers' or 'Pathfinders', or...)

But back to the topic. In the recent yule-time holiday, I was treated to cracking open several festive crackers, happy in the sure and certain knowledge that they would contain instantly forgettable throwaway items of little or no value or usefulness. But this year, as the world prepares to plunge headlong into an uncertain financial future, something had gone wrong and I actually got something very different:

A Christmas cracker gift that was genuinely interesting!

I know that this sounds unlikely, but stay with me here. At first sight, it appeared to be a compass, albeit without a shoe attached. But a more investigative examination (CSI-style, but without the flashy equipment) revealed an unexpected bonus: a key ring. Don't leave yet, because there's more: not only was this a key-ring with a potentially useful purpose (the compass for navigation), but there was an additional extra - the key ring was magnetic, presumably so that you could pick up dropped pins as well as navigate. Totally amazing: three useful items all in one!

Almost.
You might have already figured out the inherent problem with this particular combination of features, and so you won't be surprised at the next sentence. Unfortunately, the compass showed a strong preference to point, not to Magnetic North, but to the ring of the key-ring. The multi-purpose device turned out to be more or less useless as a compass, but okay as a magnetic key-ring. I'm counting this one as a 'near-miss' in terms of being useful, but genuinely interesting because I'm intrigued at what warped sort of mind could conceive such a pointless mix of features...

Instead, here's a few alternatives, just on the off-chance that you, gentle reader, happen to be a person who earns a living dreaming up little gifts to put inside Christmas crackers:

• Balloons used to hold pins
• A card counting device to count the number of cards in a pack of cards
• A bucket with a hole in it, embossed with the words of a well-known song
• A USB-to-PS/2 port adapter
• Pads of little yellow notes with incredibly strong glue on them
• A mini-CD of silence recorded at the top of Everest
• One shoe with a compass in the heel (and only one shoe)
• A shoe with a small hole in the heel for a compass
  
• A small black hole with a compass in it
• A small black hole
  
• A compass without a magnetised pointer
• A compass that points to Magnetic South as if it was Magnetic North
• A Higg's boson