The phrase "a few cartons" is correct and usable in written English.
You might use it to describe the number of items you have. For example: "I only have a few cartons of milk left in the fridge."
"I go home and buy a few cartons".
Duty free was abolished back in 1999, which certainly dented the number of people doing the cross-Channel shuffle to pick up a trolley-full of decent plonk (and possibly a few cartons of cigarettes to boot).
According to the communities in Bodo, in two years the company has only offered £3,500 together with 50 bags of rice, 50 bags of beans and a few cartons of sugar, tomatoes and groundnut oil.
Reached by phone, Ms. Budansky said she briefly worked as a dispatcher for a limousine company in late 2005 and early 2006 and ordered a few cartons of cigarettes for what she believed was the drivers' personal use "maybe two or three times".
He figures that with the $80 he spends on a 10-gallon tank of gas, a few cartons of Winfield cigarettes and a grocery cart of produce, he saves about $30 from what he would otherwise pay in France -- the equivalent of more than $1,000 a year.
Such smuggling is not driven by cash-strapped college kids with a few cartons in their backpacks.
The man went down to the corner grocery and asked the proprietress if he might have a few empty cartons.
(A couple of months earlier, they'd unearthed a few dozen cartons of organic ice cream; before that, enough Odwalla juices to fill the bathtub).
"Hey, what's wrong, Millstein Melel's twenty-seven-year-old boss, Jonathan, sidled up carrying a cardboard carton a few minutes later.
It was posted a few paces from the Carton House hotel entrance, considerably closer than the spaces set aside for the defending champion, Jamie Donaldson, and the major winners Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke and Padraig Harrington.
I may be way behind the curve here, but a few acts — the Milk Carton Kids, Rhiannon Giddens, and Lake Street Dive — were new to me, knocked me flat, and ought to be passed along.
