I was watching the Dick Van Dyke Show the one where Rob gives Laura an Empress Carlotta necklace and he thinks it’s beautiful but it’s really gaudy and tacky.
So I thought I’d ask the same question here
What is the most tacky, tasteless or gaudy gift given to you by someone who thought it was nice.
The thing is it can’t be a joke gift, or a gift by someone who knows it’s bad, it has to be by someone who thinks the gift is beautiful or suitable, but it really isn’t
I once had a boyfriend give me a bright orange footprint shaped ashtray. Maybe others would appreciate it more, I don’t know. I found it hideous, but he MADE it for me so I had to keep it out while we dated. It didn’t last long.
My aunt made me one of those ugly cloth “adoptable” dolls that were so popular in the eighties. They were a bit like Cabbage Patch dolls, only hand made, all cloth. Maybe I’d have appreciated it more if I wasn’t a teen, but it was still one ugly doll. I felt horrible because I know she worked so hard to get it just right for me and she probably thought I’d really love it.
Honest-to-god, my mother once gave me a nose hair scissors for Christmas. What was she thinking?
And, no, don’t anyone dare imagine me as having hair hanging out of my nostrils. :eek:
My mom is really into haute couture. I, on the other hand, buy as many mix & match basic clothes as I can so I don’t have to think about what I’m wearing.
One Thanksgiving, my mom gifted me with a shiny black jacket that resembled a garbage bag and probably cost at least $400 plus a pair of horsehair pumps that probably cost that much or more. Now, it’s family tradition that we always go to a restaurant the day after Thanksgiving so no one has to cook. Unfortunately, mom insisted I wear her gift with a little black dress to the nicest restaurant in our mid-sized town. The result? I looked like a very expensive call girl/Kewpie doll (she insisted on applying my make up - NOT a good idea) wearing a trashbag. Even my then-fiance was hard-pressed to say something nice.
A used lipstick from my husband’s aunt.
It was nothing personal, she gave weird shit to everyone. But I won the “Weirdest gift from Aunt Jackie” award that year.
For my wife’s birthday, my sister bought her a $25 gift card from Walgreens. Nothing says “I picked this up on my way here” than a Walgreen’s gift card.
For my daughter’s birthday, my sister gave her a Knoxville Catholic High School seat cushion. Beside being an odd gift for a 7 year-old, the cushion was in my sister’s possession because we bought the thing a week prior because her daughter was complaining about the hard metal seats at the football stadium. So we were, I guess, re-gifted with our very own gift. But it wasn’t really a gift - it was just a $5 seat cushion which was a valuable investment so I didn’t have to listen to the kids whine about their butts hurting.
Also, that same birthday, my daughter received a package of white gloves.
Opened. Used. And dirty.
:rolleyes:
I was gifted a plastic phone that looked like a steam locomotive. It was just a piece of crap, hung up if you tried to set it down anywhere, and you couldn’t lay it on the side or the cheap plastic parts would break. :rolleyes:
Someone gave it to me because I like trains, but apparently they don’t get that I like modern equipment, not 75 years ago…
My ex, at the first Christmas he met and spent with my parents, gave me a vibrating back massager.
My mom wouldn’t stop making fun of me the entire time.
Perhaps not tacky or tasteless, but certainly useless. For my last birthday I was given a coffee table book about strange and interesting cars by some people who obviously know nothing at all about my interests. I really don’t know the contents of it. I have never opened it as the only thing I could care less about than automobiles would be sports.
On Christmas when I was little my brother and I got neckties from our great grandmother. They were identical – one was as ugly as the other.
And they were clip ons.
And my brother’s would fit me, as long as I didn’t grow anymore.
Oh, and I didn’t wear ties.
When I graduated High School in '76, my Mom bought me a leisure suit as a graduation present. Even I knew they were tacky and would get me made fun of, but I wore it for her a few times.
My Godparents bought me a Memory Game for Christmas.
When I was twelve.
A friend of mine received a tongue shaped vibrator from her father-in-law. He had no idea what it was for.
This is cheating because it was a gag gift, but it’s funny so I’ll post it anyway. My SO and I have a long standing tradition of giving stupid gifts to a friend of ours, K. Now K was getting married to a very classy girl, M, and we were invited to the rehearsal dinner. We had only met M a few times, and so she didn’t know about/ understand the gift thing. We’d brought a present and wrapped it very nicely; an electric dear head oil warmer. It was a resin deer head, with an electric bowl in the antlers. You put scented oil in the bowl and it warms it to make the room smell nice. We also got 3 vials of scented oil- Bootylicious, Sweet Pussy, and Jungle Fever. Very thoughtful. The best part was the box, which had a full color picture of this decorative tragedy and announced the contents- “ELECTRIC DEER HEAD OIL WARMER”
So, anyway, when M goes to open this gift, she didn’t realize that it was meant to be a joke. When she pulled away the paper, she could see the picture on the box, but no one else at the party could. Of course, my SO and I knew what she was seeing. The look on her face was priceless. You could tell she was trying not to make a horrified face, but failing, so she ended up looking stricken and sickly. She was totally speechless. K picked up that something was wrong, so he looked over her shoulder to see what it was (she’d stopped unwrapping it, in horror) and burst out laughing. Once she realized it was a joke, her relief was palpable. It was pretty great.
As a birthday present from my (then-) boyfriend, I got an orange baseball cap with the mascot (tiger) of his college on it. And by “on it” I don’t mean a little embroidered patch or something, I mean it looked like someone grabbed a stuffed tiger, scalped it from the top of the head going forward, and kept going through the top jaw, then sewed that to the front of the cap and the bill. Yeah. Awesome present for a then-18ish girl who wasn’t a fan of Tiny Little Liberal Arts School’s sports teams or anything.
I posted this in the 2008 “Most inappropriate Christmas gift you got this year” thread.
A rock.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10618865&postcount=7
Do people really use the word “gift” as a verb? I mean outside of flowery prose and archaic legal documents, of course.
Back in December of 2005, I went on a trip that was supposed to be a delayed honeymoon. My wife at the time told me she wanted a divorce, so I left Niagra Falls and flew to Skagit Valley in Washington State to spend the holidays with my folks, and lick my wounds.
That Christmas morning I was opening presents, and the one from my Grandma had wedding paper on it. I opened it up and it was an electric carving knife. I looked up at her, and she just shrugged. “It was going to be your wedding present, but, well, you know.”
Awesome!
I only use it in “regift,” as in, “I regifted that obnoxious lamp to your aunt.”
My father-in-law gave my wife a scale for christmas… a bathroom scale.
When Iw as dating my wife she was going through a tough time and used to call me “her rock”. So I thought it would be cool to get a rock with my name engraved on it to give her for Christmas. I ordered it online and while I htought it would be some nice flat nice looking stone, maybe even plished a bit, instead it was the big ugly chunk ofdul grayblack something ot other, with my name in it. I still gave it to her, but she looked at me and was thinking, “Uhhh, thanks?”