"Laughing like a toffee shop"! anyone ever heard this before?

[nellypope]

My mother in law who has some fantastic sayings uses this one often, the context in which she uses it is "well you can't be laughing like a toffee shop all the time"! I have searched high and low for an explantion of this with no luck at all.

[mollykins]

I've never heared it before, my nan used to say something similar but I can't quite remember it. It'll come to me soon.

[mollykins]

'Laughing like frothy pop'- I don't know which is more random . . . .

[Quizmonster]

At least frothy pop is bubbly, which is a word often associated with humour/laughter. Maybe the toffee shop version was just a mishearing of the frothy pop one...they do sound rather similar.

[jno]

or maybe 'laughing like a kid [or something] in a toffee shop'?

[Mojo-Jo-Jo]

I've never understood laugh like a drain either.

[Quizmonster]

Laugh like a drain started life as military slang. I've always assumed it came from the fact that - on days when rainwater is running along the edge of pavements and trickling into drains - it actually DOES have a sort of 'chuckling' quality, rather like a babbling brook.

[THC]

Sounds like a variation on "as happy as a kid in a sweet-shop"