Immortalized in the Tchaikovsky ballet "The Nutcracker", a nutcracker is a wooden figure with a jaw that unhinges (not terribly unlike an anaconda in that respect) to put things in the mouth that normally wouldn't fit when it's politely closed. The benefit of this is that nuts¹ can be inserted into the nutcracker's mouth, and with the use of a lever on the fellow's backside, crushed open - or cracked... hence the name nutcracker.

It seems that the most common form of a nutcracker is as royalty, or dressed up in fancy soldier garb. Generally, they tend to be dressed up in fancier clothes than their owner, occasionally outfitted with a cape, so that you can't actually reach around to the lever to do any nut cracking at all. In fact, most of the expensive and finely crafted nutcrackers are purely ornamental and aren't very effective at cracking into nuts. Sometimes, it's more appropriate to use metal hand powered nut cracking devices... if for no other reason than that you don't have to floss a kingly piece of wood afterwards.

Nutcrackers can come in all shapes and sizes, though. Some are dressed up like golfers, fire fighters, Frankensteins, bakers, sports figures, pirates... anything or anyone really.

How they Work

The nutcracker is shaped like a human being - to an extent. It generally has a head, arms, legs and a torso. Its mouth is perhaps a bit larger than the average human being's mouth, though.

In its normal position, the two parts of the mouth are together at the top. The mouth traditionally shows the teeth of the nutcracker. The top part doesn't move, but the bottom one can. Through the lever that comes out around the back, the lower part of the mouth can be moved up and down, from the resting position level with the shoulders to just above the waiste. To crack a nut, one is supposed to put the mouth in the lower position, insert the nut into the hole between the two halves of the mouth, and then use the lever to push the lower part up to the upper part, thus forcing the nut to break open. In theory at least.