Sweet victory for selection box crew in 12 pubs challenge

Life is like a box of chocolates, said one Forest Gump but weekend shoppers in Dublin could have been forgiven for thinking that maybe it was more like a selection box.

In planning their “12 pubs of Christmas” boozefest, a group of lifelong friends decided to ditch the Christmas jumpers and don instead giant handmade replicas of the chocolate bar wrappers that make up the Cadbury Selection Box.

Photos of the men posted online have now gone viral, including one featuring them lying on the ground in the outline shape of the selection box.

By last night, the number of likes on Facebook was heading north of 350,000 and, unsurprisingly, Cadbury Ireland couldn’t resist tweeting its delight “This has made our day!!! So well made and perfectly modeled :) #SelectionBoxSuits”.

Aaron Johnston, 31, who runs a fitness company, was the brain behind the idea while his mate Craig made all the costumes by hand. Two of the 12 men travelled from Australia for the event and one from Canada.

Mr Johnston said they had been doing the 12 pubs crawl for the past seven years and every year, they come up with a different theme. Last year, the theme was the nativity, and they they didn’t think they could outdo it. But it seems they now have.

Each item in the selection box was represented from the Crunchie to the Curly Wurly to the Flake, the Twirl, the Wispa, the Time Out and that bar of Fudge that nobody wants

Mr Johnston said they all chipped in to cover the cost of material for the outfits

‘My friend Craig made all the costumes by hand. We all chipped in with a few quid for him to get the material, but it must’ve taken him a long time to make.”

The men got a fantastic reaction when they reached the city centre on Saturday after people viewed their pictures on Facebook.

And while he may have had to nurse a sore head yesterday, Mr Johnston said he was snowed under by messages of support.

Groups like Drinkaware have been critical of the evolving 12 pubs tradition, with the drinks-industry funded organisation saying it “feeds into the cultural problem associated with how some people drink in Ireland”.