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Identity: Conkers.

History: Introduced to the UK over four centuries back.

Look: The outdoor world's collectible doll.

That can't be accurate. It is. Check out a social media video of someone unboxing a conker, and you’ll almost certainly hear them refer to it as “nature's Labubu”.

Opening up horse chestnuts? What on Earth are you talking about? Oh wow, you are definitely not up to date, aren’t you? Young people are taking to TikTok to film themselves unpeeling conkers from their prickly shells.

What's the reason? Due to the sense of wonder! When you unbox a conker, you can't predict what you’re going to get. Will it be big? Might it be flattened? How shiny will it be? It is like a mystery box every time!

Do Labubu dolls share those traits? No, they’re vaguely hellish-looking dolls that have become collectible because they also come in mystery boxes.

Can someone please tell the younger crowd that they are doing conkers wrong? Are they? How do you play with horse chestnuts, then?

You put a shoelace through the middle of them, and try to destroy everyone else’s conkers. Wow, really? That’s unusual.

Yeah. Your odds improve if you leave it in vinegar and then heat it in the oven. Seriously?

Truly. And if you end up collecting too many conkers, you can hurl them across the playground and all the other kids will fight each other for them. A lovely item from nature like a conker, and you use it as a weapon? A weapon that comes with a long set of arcane and bewildering rules?

It’s traditional! The King recently awarded the World Conker Championships with a gift of 300 conkers! At least young people are just recording videos.

Why don’t you know this? At a guess, because certain schools prohibited the game two decades ago, due to various health and safety fears.

Today's society always surprises. Maybe revealing horse chestnuts just isn’t your thing. In which case, perhaps you would be better suited to some other popular gen Z trends.

Is that so? Like what? Well, there’s this thing called yarn work, and something else called clay crafting that I can explain to you.

We’ve had knitting and pottery for centuries! Let me guess, you boil the needles in cider and then use them to poke each other?

No! OK, calm down. I thought all old-people traditions involved some type of aggression, after that horse chestnut game.

This is overwhelming. Take a breath. If you need me, I’ll be unboxing seeds for clicks.

Appropriate comment: “TikTok can’t stop filming conker reveals.”

What to avoid: “This is nuts.”