Souvenirs are often pretty tacky. It is natural to want a keepsake of a pleasant vacation, but the traditional things at best are sometimes stereotypes, and at worst cheap and shoddy.
What is the tackiest souvenir you received as a gift from someone else’s vacation?
What is the tackiest souvenir you still own?
What is the best thing you bought as a souvenir for someone else?
Which souvenir do you value the most?
Do you collect a specific type of souvenir?
Here is a thread from nigh 20 years ago on tacky souvenirs we might enjoy.
I just today noticed that the person who posted that tacky souvenir thread was named “Tikki”. For completeness I wonder where “Rikki” is now? 
As to your questions.
Don’t think anyone has ever brought me a souvenir since I was a kid. And not many of those.
I have very few now, tacky or otherwise, having cleared most of that out when I last moved. I do have a well-faded coffee cup from the Wichita world series of the national amateur baseball league from about 1990. it’s not so much tacky as getting bedraggled.
Can’t say I recall. I was never much for bringing back random gifts for folks. Most recently I bought a ~12" plush shark at the Miami Seaquarium to send to another Doper’s ~5yo grandkid who was just ga-ga about sharks. She loved it.
Not exactly souvenirs, but the few remaining physical mementos from my late first wife.
I collect nothing except scars. Never understood the attraction of collecting. Or of most souvenirs.
Sorry to be a bit of a Debbie Downer, but there you have it. Not trying to threadshit. Mostly I wanted to share that fun old thread your OP reminded me instantly of.
Well, my Aunt often brings me ridiculous things from her travels, but I love them. One of my prized possessions is a pair of pink plastic chopsticks she found in Japan. They are printed with the phrase Madonna: Feel the good feeling.
I also have a plastic tissue packet decorated with Gudetama, a cute little sentient egg character.
You have an awesome aunt!
She’s my best friend for a reason.
When I was a teenager in the late 50s I lived at a popular seaside destination and during the summer there were always jobs in the various shops and entertainment emporiums.
The shops sold tacky souvenirs by the ton. Back then, I think it was de-rigour to bring something back after a fortnight by the sea, so they would spend money on ornaments made of some material that had the strength of compressed chalk. Mermaids were popular, but there were many other figurines. Ashtrays were made of the same material, but the extravagant could buy glass ones.
As a family, we never subscribed to the idea of souvenirs, but these days we do look for fridge magnets if we want a reminder of somewhere nice.
In Anchorage, it’s common to see Moose Nugget jewelry in the tacky tourist shops. I never bought any though.
I got Go Away Drops from the Voodoo Store in New Orleans. I sprinkled them around my cubicle but my boss kept coming around anyway.
I once went to Houston.
And bought a Statue Of Liberty paperweight.
They did not have a Statue Of Liberty in that city.
I can’t think of any I have, though I’m sure I do. Here’s one of the tackiest souvenirs I’ve ever seen.
In the gift shop at the official visitor’s center at a national park dedicated to a very famous battle in the Civil War, I found what could only be called Lincoln on a Stick. The plastic head of Honest Abe was perched atop two sticks, one to hold, and the other to move Abe’s plastic mouth. I picked it up and said “4 score and seven years ago…” as I moved the mouth. I was delighted. I could not contain my laughter at this ridiculous trinket and considered buying it, until I saw it was $15.
Really, it wasn’t that funny.
I went back a few years later to find Lincoln on a Stick was no longer available. Tsk tsk.
My tackiest souvenir is a miniature plastic license plate from Casa de Fruta in Pacheco Pass. We’d stopped for a meal on a road trip, and I commented that they never had my name included when there were souvenirs with names on them. Well, they did have my name, so my bf bought it for me. No longer have the bf, but I still have the little license plate.
Oh, and googling to jog my memory, I saw that the cup flipper had retired. No big surprise. 25 years ago he was getting pretty feeble. I’d be even more surprised if he weren’t dead.
Somewhere deep in the bowels of my closet is a souvenir t-shirt I got from attending a Federalist Gun Club shoot back in the '90s (it was rewarding; I got to fire a Chinese SKS rifle). The message printed on the t-shirt is “Our Idea Of Gun Control Is A Steady Hand”.
The now-closed gift shop at the L.A. Coroner’s Office offered a variety of tacky souvenirs, like clothing and beach towels with a body outline design, and body bags.
Who was the gift shop intended for? The people who worked there, the public, or ??
The public. Apparently they attracted visitors from all over.
I can’t even…
This was back in the day when the coroner Thomas Noguchi was in the job (and for a while later, too). There were a lot of high profile murders in L.A., and tourists were into that kind of ghoulishness.
There was also this TV show which ran as new episodes for 7 years plus umpteen more years in syndication making the LA County Coroner’s office quite famous. When tourists come to LA they want to see the real-world settings of the shows they’ve watched if that’s possible.
I think tacky souvenirs can serve a purpose - if you visit a place (especially with free/cheap admission) and buy a piece of bric-a-brac to support the location, then it’s a way to keep it going, especially weird but wonderful places.
The only such items I currently own are a couple of shot glasses from The Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque NM (not free, but used to be cheap). Another place of note growing up in NM was the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. The gift shop was full of tackiness (cheap ‘space’ toys and kits, plus Astronaut Ice Cream!) but it felt good to support the history of (this was the post Challenger 80s, not a lot of future feeling at the time) our efforts to reach beyond our planet.
As for tacky crap I’ve received, in general it’s more as a joke than an honest gift. And I return the favor, where it’s not about the cost, but a way of saying “I went to blah, and all I got you was this lousy blech!”
How about all the tasteless tchotchkes after Princess Diana’s death, and 9/11?
I was working at the grocery store pharmacy during the 9/11 era (I was off that day - long story) and a couple months later, they had “United We Stand Hand Soap.” That ended up selling at long last when it was marked down 75%.
I got a “Texans for Bush” t-shirt and a naked lady mudflap hat from a Hot Topic in College Station, Texas.