When commercial composer Jody Colero opened Einstein Brothers audio house in Toronto in 1988, he had a blandness problem.

‘At the back of the room that I used to work in was what’s called a bass trap. It looks like a gigantic shadow box with a bunch of little square shelves in it that are meant to keep the room tuned and stop bass frequencies from travelling too far. I kept looking at the thing and it’s really boring.’

Colero soon figured out that the squares were just the right size for a Kinder Surprise toy.

‘Part of the thing about doing music for ads is not just doing good music but entertaining your clients. So at the end of the day, I would bring in Kinder eggs for everyone so we could all have some chocolate and then assemble our toys. I started it as just something to do and I became known for it. Eventually we had an entire wall filled, and then we had the entire wall filled double or triple.’

The bass trap consists of approximately 200 boxes, which means almost 600 toys.

‘It brought the energy up in the session because everybody was looking forward to the Kinder egg session. It gave you a nice little pick-me-up and it gave you something to do with your hands. But you had to leave the toy behind.’

‘Eventually we did do a session for Kinder. Geoffrey Roche and the client came in and could not believe it.’

Colero’s monumental collection is no longer at its peak. Colero closed Einstein Brothers two years ago to take some time off and gave away half the toys in the move. His new Toronto shop, Silent Joe, launched just a few months ago, has already done work for Pontiac, Clorets, the Degrassi television series and Cookworks for Food TV – but not Kinder.

‘The collection is now in a box, right next to me. It’s not that impressive right now. I had a million of them.’