Sheffield aunt orders advent calendar for niece, 4, and receives gruesome horror film figures in online mix-up

Doting aunt Vanessa Toulmin was thrilled to have found an advent calendar with characters from her great niece’s favourite film.
David Kessen
By David Kessen
Published 3rd Dec 2021, 13:00 GMT
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

She ordered after seeing it advertised on the internet, imagining how much the four-year-old would love the calendar based on the Tim Burton children’s film, The Nightmare Before Christmas.

But it was not the surprise she was expecting – when a set of mass murderers from adult horror films dropped through the letter box following an error!

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Vanessa is a Sheffield university professor who is well known as the founder and research director of the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield, and runs the city’s Festival of the Mind and Ideas Bazaar events.

Doting aunt Vanessa Toulmin was thrilled to have found an advent calendar with characters from her great niece’s favourite film - but a delivery mix-up meant she received these gruesome horror film figures in errorDoting aunt Vanessa Toulmin was thrilled to have found an advent calendar with characters from her great niece’s favourite film - but a delivery mix-up meant she received these gruesome horror film figures in error
Doting aunt Vanessa Toulmin was thrilled to have found an advent calendar with characters from her great niece’s favourite film - but a delivery mix-up meant she received these gruesome horror film figures in error

She said she ordered the Nightmare Before Christmas Advent Calendar for her niece who loves the film.

Wrong delivery

Vanessa said: “This is what I got instead - serial killers, mass murderers, figures from pretty much every adult horror fest from the last 40 years!"

She said her niece was quite cross when she was told she could not keep the figurines – as she had taken a liking to a character from the 80s horror The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, who she innocently described as her ‘tree cutter’.

Doting Sheffield aunt Vanessa Toulmin was thrilled to have found an advent calendar with characters from her great niece’s favourite film - but she was sent horror film characters by mistakeDoting Sheffield aunt Vanessa Toulmin was thrilled to have found an advent calendar with characters from her great niece’s favourite film - but she was sent horror film characters by mistake
Doting Sheffield aunt Vanessa Toulmin was thrilled to have found an advent calendar with characters from her great niece’s favourite film - but she was sent horror film characters by mistake
Hide Ad
Hide Ad

"She loves Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. She's not a Disney sort of girl – her other favourite is The Grinch! I expected there were going to be fun figures like Jack Skellington,” said Vanessa.

"I sent off for it from a small Amazon ad. But when it arrived it had things like Hannibal Lecter and Jason from Halloween. There were some things which I couldn’t work out, such as what appeared to be pieces of sushi and some scary pumpkins with teeth

"I’m sure some people would love it, but it was not the sort of thing for a four-year-old.

"Luckily, her mum, my niece, saw the funny side. She thought it was hilarious.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

After Vanessa contacted PayPal about the problem, she was given a refund for the item

She has now managed to get a different Nightmare Before Christmas calendar, which came complete with reading and colouring activities for her niece to do as part of a set.

Related topics:SheffieldUniversity of SheffieldDisney