Schoolboy spends six years saving up 100,000 tickets from the fairground to win a giant Minion

Most trips to the fairground end with a sugar rush and pocketfuls of cheap plastic tat.

But one schoolboy spent six years saving up all the tickets he could so he could have exactly what he wanted – a giant Minion.

Jack Barker spotted the toy when he was four – the first time he visited Chessington World of Adventures in Surrey.

But he knew 100,000 arcade tickets was a huge goal.

For six years, he refused to give in and take lollipops or novelty pens home, instead saving every ticket from each visit.

Now 10, Jack has amassed so many he can fill two wheelbarrows with the mountain of almost 100,000 tickets, which weighed around three stone.

But in the end, Jack decided to leave the Minion toy and donated most of his tickets to charity – keeping just 6,000 for himself to get a new drone.

Dad Paul Barker, 47, from Fetcham, Surrey, said: ‘We’ve been collecting the tickets since Jack was four and we’ve never really spent them. He’s always saved them up and you get to a point where you’ve so many.

‘It’s pretty good of him – most children would think they’d just get a lollipop each time.

‘It’s very mature – let’s hope he’s the same with money when he’s a teenager!

‘I dread to think how much we’ve spent over the years in the arcades – it would run into the thousands.

‘It’s nothing over the years – a tenner here and there. But I can imagine it’s in the thousands – I don’t want to think about it.

‘I know the tickets don’t weigh up to how much you spend but I love seeing the look on his face when he wins.

‘The first time we went to Chessington he was putting coins into the slot machines but didn’t really get the concept.

‘He’d win one or two tickets then want a giant Minion, so we said it was a good idea to save them for something better down the line.

‘It’s become habitual now. He still gets the buzz of winning the tickets, but then we take them home and put them in the storage container.’

Over the weekend, the mechanic and his son finally decided to try to cash in the tickets and loaded up the wheelbarrows but became stuck when they wouldn’t fit into Paul’s car.

Instead, they set about counting the tickets – which took four hours and turned out to be in excess of 96,500.

Paul said: ‘We didn’t manage to get to the theme park itself. If we rocked up with two wheelbarrows full it was going to be an absolute nightmare.

‘When you get there you have to feed them into a machine that then prints out a receipt.

‘Can you imagine someone queuing behind us waiting to cash in 100 tickets?

‘It took us four hours so we thought we’d go another day.

‘Jack was very excited to know exactly how many we had.

‘When you see that big bundle it’s hard to get an idea of how many there are.

‘I told him to take a guess and he said about 10,000. I said “I think it’s more than that, love”.

‘I have an accurate set of kitchen scales and it works out that five tickets equals one gram.

‘So we multiplied that by how many we had in weight.

‘I said I think it’s almost 100,000 and of course, Daddy was right.

‘We ended up with piles and piles of the folded ones, then a big bag full of individual ones.

‘I haven’t got a clue what he’d be eligible to win if he cashed them in.

‘There’s been so many funny comments from people saying “oh, 97,000 tickets should be enough for a pencil sharpener”.’

Amazed by his epic display of tickets, Jack was eager to cash them all in at his favourite theme park – but after realising just how many he had, he decided he’d like to help other less fortunate kids.

Paul said: ‘My son is very lucky – he’s not spoilt but he doesn’t really want for anything.

‘It was really sweet – he wasn’t saying “I want to get something really good with them”. He was just intrigued by how many he had.

‘We put them in two wheelbarrows but there were just too many tickets to fit in the car.

‘So we were wondering if there was a local charity we could maybe donate them too.

‘We thought it might be really nice to give these to a children’s charity who have organised a day out to Chessington’s or something like that.

‘I’m always trying to encourage him to do things for others and we thought about going down to a charity.

‘There’s so many people out there that will just want them for personal gain.’

Deciding he’d quite like a new drone, Jack can’t wait to visit the theme park, for which he has a season ticket.

But as agreed with his dad, he is plotting to find a local charity so children might benefit from some of the prizes he wins.

Jack said: ‘I’d like to give some prizes to people that don’t really get to go to arcades or have very much money so they can be lucky like me.