An article that elicits a wry smile from the reader is worth drawing attention to particularly in the winter months. This account of brave self-experimentation is unlikely to lead to a future Nobel prize but nonetheless reinforces the important principle that we should always estimate the overall necessity of intervention against non-intervention in our surgical actions. Five popular sweets (mint, fruit or chocolate based) were placed in the right nasal cavity under the inferior turbinate of the author and the time taken to dissolve was recorded. All dissolved in under one hour although mint enthusiasts may be keen to know that a polo takes approximately fifteen minutes longer to dissolve than a tic tac! The authors suggest that if a paediatric nasal foreign body is clearly a sweet of the sugary / chocolate variety – a watch and wait approach is prudent in the first instance. This article is placed between a number of particularly worthy but intense articles based on statistics and immunology and for those who read Clinical Otolaryngology ‘cover to cover’ it provided a refreshing change in tone!
