Here at Octopus we like a good competition.  Whether it's our world record breaking Jaff-Off ('how many Jaffa Cakes can you eat in a minute), or the quarterly awarding of the ceremonial apron in Cake Club - we are always striving to be the best.

And we don't stop at food... the emails that circulate about the Octopus Fantasy Football League have prompted a good number of desperate UNSUBSCRIBE!! pleas.

So you can imagine the excitement in the office a few weeks ago when some of the team got to talking about the upcoming Panini World Cup Sticker Thingy-Me-Bob.  Without wanting to fall into any gender stereotype traps, it's probably fair to say it was the guys who were getting the most worked up (helped by the fact that the email calling for the competition was distributed to a very dated guys@ email alias ... don't worry - I am working on replacing it with a football@ gender neutral alternative).

"Let's have a Panini-Off!"

"No, let's set up a Panini trading platform, maybe our Five21 social media team can make us an online community we can run it on?"

.... and other such overly excitable exclamations bounced around the office.

So why am I blogging about this?  In the desperate hope that someone out there can explain to me why (oh why) full grown men cannot see the financial futility of investing 50p a pop for 5 stickers.... with (to quote the Panini website) "a whopping 640 stickers to collect"! If you don't get a single repetition (or if you find enough pals to trade every single double of that unknown Cameroon-y player for those elusive "awesome glitter stickers") you will still be investing £64 plus the album for a full set.

And you will get duplicates.  One of the directors here has only got 36  stickers so far and has already got two Didier Drogbas.

I have taken a peek and you can pick up the complete ET Panini book (from 1982) for less than £60 on eBay at the moment, along with a complete Munich '74 World Cup album ($80) and the Korea Japan complete album (but you have to stick the stickers yourself) for less than fifty quid.

Come on boys, clock on to the memory-lane marketing and back away from the sticker set! You have mortgages and aspirations for shiny new BBQs this summer, and this aint gonna help anyone.

Emily