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I wanted to share some great gift ideas for young children, as the holiday season is fast approaching, and who has time to figure out the latest trends? These items are sure to be huge this year, so you're going to have to plan ahead if you want little Timmy to be the coolest kid on the block sporting this gear come the New Year. How did I come up with this amazing list of gotta-have items? Believe it or not, my parents literally dropped this off. They did all the research and hard work (being born immediately after the depression in the Midwest, living through rationing during WWII, developing into borderline hoarders, making trips to the transfer station and bringing back more than they went with, etc) to bring this phenomenal collection together in one stylish Polyethylene Plastic Resin #4 carrying case. Bear in mind, we have a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old, so it's not easy to please both since they're at very different developmental stages. According to my parents, virtually all of these items are appropriate for either age. Let's see what we've got! The Collection (as presented)  The first thing you'll notice is the large assortment of Christmas-colored pens  Let's take one for a spin! (OK it was dry. This picture was taken after scribbling for a good minute)  Time for a broad overview of the highlights. Items that I won't detail further down the page include a stylish ladies' SlimLine cigarette lighter (less flint and butane), a 1/16th full faux-chrome bottle of SuperStank old lady perfume, an unexposed 24-count roll of ISO 100 Kodak Gold PLUS film, and a classic TechnoQuartz timepiece by none other than Benrus.  Kids always running out of outlets for their shrieking, beeping gadgets? As long as you're not running more than 15 amps through it, this tiny phenolic power strip instantly triples your outlet count!  The pill bottle is sure to be a big hit. Great news, TCCers, you get to supply your preferred drugs, as this one comes empty.  Don't let the errors in your 3-year old's typed correspondence be a source of consternation, just use this Liquid Paper brand correction fluid.  Which may in fact, arrive empty. But why does it feel so heavy and full?  Oh, the ravages of time have transformed it into 0.6 ounces of Solid Paper.  OK, forget the typewritten garbage, your childrens' thank-you cards will be much more sincere when written with this mint, unsharpened Flesh-colored Col-Erase pencil.  With a name like Col-Erase, you can bet the eraser is going to be something special!  You may be scratching your head, wondering how you're going to erase all those flesh-colored mistakes. Well, the more astute among you may remember seeing among the original collection a single large pencil-top eraser, still in its original protective packaging. Sadly, it has been petrified by time, and has roughly the consistency of glazed ceramic.  If you're sick of all the modern gadgetry, why not go back to a simpler time, when a roofing nail and random screw could provide hours of entertainment for the little ones?  OK, we're now leaving the bag itself for some loose items that were also provided. Take astounding pictures with this 35mm Vivitar PS:135 Auto Focus / DX camera. Sure to be found in any professional photographer's bag (or anyone who subscribed to Reader's Digest in 1990 and received this as a free gift), this rugged camera can take the abuse that a preschooler can dish out.  During a typical fall of 18 inches, the only thing that happens is the battery compartment opens and the batteries spray across the floor. Luckily, this only happens about twice a minute, and the camera sustains no permanent damage. Simply have the ER doctor retrieve the batteries from your 1-year-old's intestines, pop them back in the camera and you're taking professional-looking portraits again in no time!  What happens if a battery ruptures inside your toddler, do you resign to not capturing those priceless moments? No, you reach for your loving holdout camera, opening the crystal clear safety case and drawing your Minolta Disc-7. Features include a non-replaceable battery that's been dead for 16 years and a film format that no longer exists.  Now here's a sensible toddler gift, a Cabbage Patch Doll! You know you have a real, authentic collector's item when the creator personally places his signature on the rear end cheek of a little girl doll.  If your child isn't put off by the slightly manic stare of the Cabbage Patch Kid, put this toe-sucking MurderBear in their room at night. Includes Club Fed gold-plated BlingCuffs. Two thumbs up for another sleepless night with this thing in their room.  Anyone else have insane family members that gift you their trash? Let's hear about it.
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Aug 18, 2014 03:53
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 02:24 |
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When I was a kid I got a stuffed dog from my mom that she didn't want and in turn got from one of her students. Said stuffed dog is now a plaything for my real dog at least.
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Aug 18, 2014 09:12
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A pocket knife with a broken, wobbly hinge; a string of novelty lights that look like red chilli peppers; 3-year-old condoms; a toaster filled with the previous owner's crumbs and jam; a box full of gaudy costume jewelry with missing clasps and rhinestones and encrusted with makeup and skin crud; a live goldfish in a Solo cup. The goldfish found a new home with a friend who cared. 
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Aug 18, 2014 09:40
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About five years ago, I told my mom that I would like a good digital camera, not like a really good DSLR but something decent I could take good photos with in museums and stuff if I traveled. She gave me a 1.5 megapixel camera that I am fairly certain stopped getting made about ten years ago. It looked like this:  Except, you know, only capable of a lower resolution than the camera on the phone I got for free with my cell plan. I can only imagine she had the package in a box for years and was like well I'll give him this loving thing. The same Christmas, she spent ten grand to buy herself a golf cart to "drive around the neighborhood."
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Aug 18, 2014 10:00
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We got a VHS of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, for Christmas.
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Aug 18, 2014 13:57
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I got an old socket wrench set when I was 13. Came in a metal box with orange paint flaking off and a wrench that wasn't original so you had to use a whole Tower of Babel stack of different adapters with it. Turned out to be a favorite gift because as I got older I got a shitload of use out of it.
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Aug 18, 2014 17:17
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My uncle gave me a keychain for my birthday. I was ten. I had no keys.
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Aug 20, 2014 00:53
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My grandmother loves giving me old and potentially expired food every time I visit her. She also thinks that I am still in 18 years old and just going to college (I am 30 years old). The most recent time, she handed me a bag of "Mexican themed" food. Her words, as she handed it over. "I got you a Mexican theme this time." The contents from the bag were as follows: 1: Two 3lb bags of salt water taffy. Actually pretty awesome, but a lot of candy. One bag looked like it was 90% banana flavored by volume. 2: An entire box of ramen noodles. 3: An expired jar of alfredo sauce. 4: Two packets of taco seasoning. 5: One expired jar of salsa. 6: Super stale plastic jar filled with cheese crackers. Sadly this was about two months ago, so I don't have pictures to share. Ninja edit: The bag wound up being only 70% banana by volume. The other 30% was a mixture of berry and grape. I left it in the common area at work. Val Helmethead has a new favorite as of 03:37 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 03:35
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Is this a common problem?
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Aug 20, 2014 06:07
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I found a table and chair set by a dumpster and gave it to my church for their rummage sale. And I got an old Atari 800XL set from my brother because I asked for it and he said I could have it for my birthday.  Ema Nymton has a new favorite as of 14:48 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 14:46
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Anatharon posted:Is this a common problem? If you have old parents/old people in your life, yes. It's like hoarding but you pass it on to the younger generation. I like to think, in their subconscious, they're hoping you'll throw it away for them.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:40
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I once gave my brother one of my old computer games for christmas. Sorry bro. 
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Aug 20, 2014 23:24
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peanut posted:If you have old parents/old people in your life, yes. It's like hoarding but you pass it on to the younger generation. I like to think, in their subconscious, they're hoping you'll throw it away for them. If only. My mother does this repeatedly, passes on junk to my wife and me. Not old family heirlooms either, old junk that she runs across when she's cleaning out her closets or whatever. But if I throw it out, a year from now I'm going to get the "whatever happened to that [old suitcase, broken flashlight, 3rd grade report card of mine] that I gave you?"
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Aug 30, 2014 19:42
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Cat Army
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My dad once gave me a dewalt cordless drill, the batteries were shot and the charger made a horrible noise. Thanks dad! e: there were also multiple birthdays where he clearly stopped at a gas station on the way home
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Aug 31, 2014 22:45
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I got a cool old dictionary from my uncle, with leather covers and crinkly brown pages. I thought it was awesome until my dad pointed out that he gave that dictionary to my uncle for Christmas when they were kids.
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Sep 3, 2014 11:05
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My uncle once gave me a half-used body shop gift box, complete with hall closet dust and a markered-over gift tag on the back with his wifes name on it.
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Sep 3, 2014 13:56
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WereJace posted:My uncle once gave me a half-used body shop gift box, complete with hall closet dust and a markered-over gift tag on the back with his wifes name on it. I got the exact same gift basket thing, gift tags and all, twice in one year from two different people. Frankly I get some variation of the half empty gift box every goddamn year. My birthday is a week after Christmas and my family are all assholes who forget it, so I always get leftover Christmas gifts for my birthday. I have lost count of how many times I got the gift I gave someone for Christmas back as a birthday gift. To be fair, I'm obviously loving terrible at gift giving too, since I always hate what I get back. Jesus gently caress, I hate my birthday. Less depressing: My dad used to bring me cocktail napkins and bar receipts from the trips he took as a pilot. This ended up being a super-badass scrapbook of his travels though, so it hardly counts as trash anymore. Dude sucks at birthdays, but he's still the best dad ever so the garbage gifts are worth it.
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Sep 3, 2014 16:02
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Once got a bag of fake flowers from my great aunt who usually doesn't even bother. It was neither expected nor wanted.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:13
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When I was twelve my grandmother gave me a bag of women's size XXL grannie panties. The bag was open. One pair had skidmarks. That same year she gave my mother an empty box that, according to the markings on the outside, was supposed to contain an Avon watch. "Oh no," Grandma said when Mom unwrapped it and found it empty. "They must have made a mistake at the factory." Grandma was wearing the watch on her wrist, conspicuously. My grandmother was an rear end in a top hat tbh
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Sep 3, 2014 21:46
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Back when I was 18 and my sister was 16, she got a car from my parents. It wasn't new, but it was only about 3 years old with less than 18k miles on it. They even took it to get a CD player put in. I had been driving a lovely 86 GTI for the past two years and was pretty jealous. When my dad said I would be getting something cool for my birthday in a few weeks I got my hopes up. They gave me the tape deck that was pulled out of my sister's car... Years later when I asked them about it, they had said that they were planning getting me the car instead since I was working part time, going to school and would be heading off to college later that year and would give my sister the GTI. Then they realized that my sister couldn't drive a manual so she needed the car instead of me. I didn't know how to drive a manual when I got the GTI either, but I learned.
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Sep 3, 2014 23:29
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my family does this weird thing for christmas my mom calls "white elephant" everyone brings a sub $20 gift and we pick randomly or something I never pay attention. last year I got a pair of boot cleats for walking on ice or something and a cell phone holster that was made for one of those nokia candy bar phones from the late 90s early 00s. All of my little nieces and nephews that are exempt from this get poo poo like $200 worth of whatever the "HOT" toy this year is, that they play with for like and hour and then ask if there's more presents, sometimes they even leave them behind when they leave for home.
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Sep 3, 2014 23:53
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Shuffle posted:my family does this weird thing for christmas my mom calls "white elephant" everyone brings a sub $20 gift and we pick randomly or something I never pay attention. last year I got a pair of boot cleats for walking on ice or something and a cell phone holster that was made for one of those nokia candy bar phones from the late 90s early 00s. White Elephant is only fun IF there is copious amounts of alcohol and IF everyone involves knows it's not for serious gifts and you're supposed to bring something ridiculous. Using it as the primary gift exchange is some bullshit though.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:55
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The last time we went to my dad's step mother's house for the annual Christmas gift exchange (maybe like 13-14 years ago? I was around 18 at the time), I got a CVS branded solar pocket calculator and a pack of two incredibly off-brand AA batteries. Not actual garbage (well, the calculator anyway) but probably pulled out of a drawer an hour before we arrived.
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Sep 4, 2014 03:32
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A lump of green, sort of melted glass. No idea what it was supposed to be, looked suspiciously like a piece of melted church window. Thanks, Grandmother?
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Nov 5, 2014 13:38
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BattyKiara posted:A lump of green, sort of melted glass. No idea what it was supposed to be, looked suspiciously like a piece of melted church window. Thanks, Grandmother? See, that was a talisman the could protect you from God's divine wrath. You don't get struck by lightning when you're carrying a bit of church window that was melted by it!
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Nov 6, 2014 17:45
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When I was 9-10 I really wanted a typewriter, so my grandfather gave me his old one. I used it for about two years to write poetry (bad poetry, probably) before it ran out of ink and my dad threw it away. I forget the maker, but the body was entirely grey plastic with my grandfather's company's logo emblazoned on the side. I do kind of miss it.
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Nov 6, 2014 20:46
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UltraVariant posted:When I was 9-10 I really wanted a typewriter, so my grandfather gave me his old one. I used it for about two years to write poetry (bad poetry, probably) before it ran out of ink and my dad threw it away. I forget the maker, but the body was entirely grey plastic with my grandfather's company's logo emblazoned on the side. I do kind of miss it. The answer is always Brother. It was a Brother typewriter.
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Nov 7, 2014 19:52
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As a kid I got a stuffed animal toy, forget the name of them but I remember it was a whole line of different zoo plush animals that came with plastic cages. Anyway, one of the neighbor kids came to my 9th birthday party and brought one with him wrapped, it was a penguin that looked like it was mauled by a dog and the plastic cage was broken. I don't know if he just didn't want it or if his parents couldn't (or didn't want to) spend money on a gift, and it was the only "trash" gift I received, so it went right into the trash after the party was over.
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Nov 7, 2014 20:31
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My grandpa gave me a slide rule for my 9th birthday and the he spent the rest of the day teaching me calculus. And a friend gave me this thing, I still have no idea where she got it  Not gonna lie, but I really want that. It'll go great next to the other 10 weird cameras I have.
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Nov 7, 2014 20:45
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I got a weird sculpture that looks like some sort of caricature of a coal miner once. My grandma gave it to me, saying it was from my grandpa, who at the time was slowly dying from lymphoma. I knew I'd regret not keeping it, so it's around here somewhere. I'm moving in a couple of months so I'll find it while packing and take a picture. A piece of his cowboy/weird miner hat broke off during one of my moves, but I think I kept the piece, intending to glue it back on. I'm pretty sure she wanted me to have something "of his" before he was gone. I'm glad I kept it, even though he wasn't a coal miner, and I have no particular affinity toward mining (being a bit of a tree-hugger, especially). Of course, I also kept his ratty old man-shirt I used as a nightshirt once when I was six. That thing is an heirloom now, goddamn it, and if I turn 90 and senilely give it to someone in my family, so be it.  I miss my grampy.
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Nov 8, 2014 06:03
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A half-melted candle from a friend who usually just bought us all lovely dollar store gifts. So that was actually pretty good for her. My mom will wrap anything and everything she can find that she can reasonably spin into being a gift. She reasons that it's more stuff for us to open and it's usually stuff we might use anyways, like a new roll of Scotch tape or something. But sometimes it's just weird. I've gotten: A three-pack of mousetraps. One of those free "pocket calendars." A Janet Jackson cassette she accidentally stole from her friend in 1992 and forgot she had. ("You like 90s music!") A lip balm that was already mine that I'd left at her house. Ditto for underpants. Like it was funny, but why didn't she wash them?! Half a box of expired Uncle Ben's white rice. Girl Scout cookies that she bought from me because I was a Girl Scout. It's more amusing than offputting, though, because she still buys everyone real gifts.
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Nov 8, 2014 06:18
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You know those sites that put images on a tshirt for you? Well my grandma decided one year to make me a shirt with one. It had a picture of a diver on it that looked to be cropped in Mspaint. The shirt was also crappy quality and seveal sizes too small so I couldn't even wear it for housework. Now here's the kicker; my grandma works as an artist for a living. She has hand painted tons of great pictures and continues to do so to this day. She does professional graphic design as well, so she knows her way around a computer. Yet here she is, giving me a shirt with a picture she probably found on the first page of google and spent less than 10 seconds editing. I have no idea what the gently caress she was thinking that year.
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Nov 8, 2014 08:42
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I had an aunt and uncle give me an opened box of Chinese checkers for three years in a row. All three boxes are stacked on top of each other in my old room at my parents house. I have no idea how to play, and really didn't want to learn.
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Dec 26, 2014 09:43
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My monster-in-law (first husband's mother) was the queen of this poo poo. She was originally from NJ then moved to the deepest, most Southern part of MS when she married, and the worst of both cultures fused within a woman who was already such a miser that she made Ebeneezer Scrooge look like the Dali Lama. She would start every year for us with a giant, empty cardboard box, which she would store in her carport loft. Over the course of the year, she filled it with stuff she didn't want, trash she picked from common-use dumpsters (she was always looking for bottles and stuff to recycle), and horrible, broken, dirty poo poo she'd find in these 'junktique' stores that seem to proliferate the Deep South. She sewed and quilted, and since I did as well, she would toss all of her scrap fabric into this box; it was usually nasty fabric to begin with, but it (and everything else) in this box would stew all summer in the heat of this carport loft, simmering and setting in the stench of her stank-arsed cigarettes, and, as we found out the first year we got one of these things, harbouring an extra surprise. We lived farther north on the East Coast where it actually got cold in the winter, so she'd ship this stuff up to us, as cheaply as possible (4th class media mail). It would get cold during the long transit, so we wouldn't realise just how much it was going to stink when we brought inside that first big, box. Nothing in it was wrapped, she warned us, so we decided to wait until closer to xmas to start sifting through whatever treasures my ex's generous mum had sent to us two, poor graduate students. In our innocence, we did think it would/might be something nice. She had a real talent for refinishing furniture, for example, and had actually taught me a lot about how to find what looked like something horrible from one of these garage sale junk places and discover that there was actually a nice piece of furniture under the crap finish, &c. The supplies to refinish furniture could be really expensive, so we wondered, maybe this is stuff so we could do up some of our own hunted finds? She was also incredibly generous with my ex's tosser sister (ie, she bought her a couple of brand-new pick up trucks, the second one after sister had trashed the first one about a week after getting it. She also paid the down payment on and kept up the mortgages on his sister's really nice house so that his sister wouldn't have to, you know, go out and do something icky like get a job). First of all, junk from a dirty junktique store starts to stink of old oil, old feet, and other assorted horrible things when it starts to warm up. Ditto fabric that's actually yellowed from the amount of smoking she did (everything in her house was stained with and stank of stale cigarette smoke). The other thing that gets a bit lively after a long lie in during the cold of transport are cockroaches. We opened up that box and they came pouring out like a scene from Damnation Alley. After that first xmas, all of her lovely gift boxes sat on our front deck in the cold until we worked up enough nerve to see if there was anything in them worth salvaging (99% of the time, no), and then taking the whole load of crap to the dump ourselves.
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Dec 26, 2014 13:33
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Many years ago I took part in a Something Awful white elephant gift exchange. I didn't exactly have high hopes, but I like doing weird gift exchanges so I joined in. I got: 1) A dirty bouncy ball 2) A bottle of off-brand windex 3) Dollar store flip-flops 4) A half-full shampoo bottle shaped like Superman. I'm still  over the crappy windex.
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Dec 26, 2014 14:52
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Wandering Knitter posted:Many years ago I took part in a Something Awful white elephant gift exchange. I didn't exactly have high hopes, but I like doing weird gift exchanges so I joined in. I got: We have goons who unironically live in crawlspaces and you expected anything else?
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Dec 26, 2014 16:42
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darkwasthenight posted:We have goons who unironically live in crawlspaces and you expected anything else? I was young and foolish.
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Dec 26, 2014 17:40
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darkwasthenight posted:We have goons who unironically live in crawlspaces and you expected anything else? Do people ironically live in crawlspaces?
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Dec 26, 2014 17:46
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My dad gave me his ex-girlfriends leather jacket when I was 12, complete with loose tobacco in the pockets.
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Dec 26, 2014 17:56
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 02:24 |
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Once my grandfather literally took a bag of trash out of the bin and gave it to me and said "this is you".
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Dec 26, 2014 18:24
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