When I was much younger and the world was bigger, brighter and life stretched out before me like a vast prairie before the advent of fences, and the summers measured in eons, I was discovering the freedom to roam the village in rural England where I was born, and there was a shop.
I was given pocket money in coins most of you have never seen or know the value of and the vague counsel not to waste it. I had of course been to the shop many times with my parents but entering it alone was something else, and it had a bran-tub.
For the young(er) and the culturally distanced, the bran tub was kind of the pre-electronic version of a slot machine, a barrel filled with dusty bran that for thruppence you were allowed to (under supervision) root around until you found something, and it was yours, the rules were however, if it surfaces, you take it.
The few times my mother had consented to my whitterings I had pulled out gifts that were less than exciting, but I was convinced that somewhere in the benthic dark reaches of that tub there lay treasure, subsequent, (and to my limited resources, expensive) sojourns to its crumbly depths proved otherwise.
In terms of effort expended to rewards gained, clicking on any thread started by Lexi is a bran-tub experience.