I, Willy Wonka, have decided to allow five children — just five, mind you, and no more — to visit my factory this year. These lucky five will be shown around personally by me, and they will be allowed to see all the secrets and the magic of my factory. Then, at the end of the tour, as a special present, all of them will be given enough chocolates and sweets to last them for the rest of their lives! So watch out for the Golden Tickets! Five Golden Tickets have been printed on golden paper, and these five Golden Tickets have been hidden underneath the ordinary wrapping paper of five ordinary bars of chocolate. These five chocolate bars may be anywhere — in any shop in any street in any town in any country in the world — upon any counter where Wonka’s Sweets are sold. And the five lucky finders of these five Golden Tickets are the only ones who will be allowed to visit my factory and see what it’s like now inside! Good luck to you all, and happy hunting! (Signed Willy Wonka.)
‘The man’s dotty!’ muttered Grandma Josephine.
‘He’s brilliant!’ cried Grandpa Joe. ‘He’s a magician! Just imagine what will happen now! The whole world will be searching for those Golden Tickets! Everyone will be buying Wonka’s chocolate bars in the hope of finding one! He’ll sell more than ever before! Oh, how exciting it would be to find one!’
‘And all the chocolate and sweets that you could eat for the rest of your life — free!’ said Grandpa George. ‘Just imagine that!’
‘They’d have to deliver them in a truck!’ said Grandma Georgina.
‘It makes me quite ill to think of it,’ said Grandma Josephine.
‘Nonsense!’ cried Grandpa Joe. ‘Wouldn’t it be something, Charlie, to open a bar of chocolate and see a Golden Ticket glistening inside!’
‘It certainly would, Grandpa. But there isn’t a hope,’ Charlie said sadly. ‘I only get one bar a year.’
‘You never know, darling,’ said Grandma Georgina. ‘It’s your birthday next week. You have as much chance as anybody else.’
‘I’m afraid that simply isn’t true,’ said Grandpa George. ‘The kids who are going to find the Golden Tickets are the ones who can afford to buy bars of chocolate every day. Our Charlie gets only one a year. There isn’t a hope.’
6
The First Two Finders
The very next day, the first Golden Ticket was found. The finder was a boy called Augustus Gloop, and Mr Bucket’s evening newspaper carried a large picture of him on the front page. The picture showed a nine-year-old boy who was so enormously fat he looked as though he had been blown up with a powerful pump. Great flabby folds of fat bulged out from every part of his body, and his face was like a monstrous ball of dough with two small greedy curranty eyes peering out upon the world. The town in which Augustus Gloop lived, the newspaper said, had gone wild with excitement over their hero. Flags were flying from all the windows, children had been given a holiday from school, and a parade was being organized in honour of the famous youth.
‘I just knew Augustus would find a Golden Ticket,’ his mother had told the newspapermen. ‘He eats so many bars of chocolate a day that it was almost impossible for him not to find one. Eating is his hobby, you know. That’s all he’s interested in. But still, that’s better than being a hooligan and shooting off zip guns and things like that in his spare time, isn’t it? And what I always say is, he wouldn’t go on eating like he does unless he needed nourishment, would he? It’s all vitamins, anyway. What a thrill it will be for him to visit Mr Wonka’s marvellous factory! We’re just as proud as anything!’
‘What a revolting woman,’ said Grandma Josephine.
‘And what a repulsive boy,’ said Grandma Georgina.
‘Only four Golden Tickets left,’ said Grandpa George. ‘I wonder who’ll get those.’
And now the whole country, indeed, the whole world, seemed suddenly to be caught up in a mad chocolate-buying spree, everybody searching frantically for those precious remaining tickets. Fully grown women were seen going into sweet shops and buying ten Wonka bars at a time, then tearing off the wrappers on the spot and peering eagerly underneath for a glint of golden paper. Children were taking hammers and smashing their piggy banks and running out to the shops with handfuls of money. In one city, a famous gangster robbed a bank of a thousand pounds and spent the whole lot on Wonka bars that same afternoon. And when the police entered his house to arrest him, they found him sitting on the floor amidst mountains of chocolate, ripping off the wrappers with the blade of a long dagger. In far-off Russia, a woman called Charlotte Russe claimed to have found the second ticket, but it turned out to be a clever fake. The famous English scientist, Professor Foulbody, invented a machine which would tell you at once, without opening the wrapper of a bar of chocolate, whether or not there was a Golden Ticket hidden underneath it. The machine had a mechanical arm that shot out with tremendous force and grabbed hold of anything that had the slightest bit of gold inside it, and for a moment, it looked like the answer to everything. But unfortunately, while the Professor was showing off the machine to the public at the sweet counter of a large department store, the mechanical arm shot out and made a grab for the gold filling in the back tooth of a duchess who was standing near by. There was an ugly scene, and the machine was smashed by the crowd.