h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I was a kid, probably about 5 or 6 years old, we were spending the summer holidays at a friend's place in Turkey.
During a very boring afternoon, I came across an un-openned pack of icing sugar, in a transparent plastic bag. The bags was printed with a brand logo featuring the drawing of a happy cooking housewife, smilimg broadly at her cake.
I probably found the drawing appealing, and quickly discovered that stretching the plastic would animate the nice lady, giving her an ever expanding smile...

Unfortunately, I also learned that even plastic material has a limited resistance to stretching, and very soon, the pack openned, and the whole living room was covered in icing sugar...

This is bad enough.

And it gets better.

Mum came in, probably alarmed that I was so silent, and quickly devised a plan to clean-up the mess before her friend's return : the house did not have a hoover (that was back in the 70's, in Istambul), so she rang the neighbours and asked if she could borrow theirs.

Heat from the antiquated hoover plus extremely fine sugar quickly equals caramel...

Her cleaning done, Mum let it cool down, and when the appealing smell was gone, she brought it back to the neighbours with a polite smile and a "thanks".

Luckily, we left Turkey a few days later and never had to explain the smelly chemistry happening in the neighbours's vacuum-cleaner...