When I was a kid
all I ever wanted was Star Wars toys - every birthday/christmas there would be a hopeful little boy waiting expectantly for the milenium falcon or an AT-AT, or at the very least, a landspeeder. Instead, I would rip open the paper only to find something 'educational'. I'll never forget I was given (after hinting ever so subtly for an X-Wing) a Paul Daniel's magic set and a set of those squashy juggling balls, because it would 'help with my co-ordination'. Needless to say I hate that bald cunt for ever existing (though, if he hadn't. it would still have been someone as equally shite filling in his magical void) and can only thank the good lord for providing grandparents and uncles/aunties who never had a clue what to get me and gave me money instead so I could buy the toys myself.
( Soup and a Sandwich, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 16:41, Reply)

oh yes...
Mrs Zaphod's Wombat had a gran. Whenever the family visited them, they took her a box of chocs as a gift. When they left, Gran gave the kids a box of chocs - different ones of course. One year, Mrs ZW spotted Gran putting the new box in a wardrobe on top of about 2 dozen other boxes. She then took one from the bottom to give to the kids. Turned out chocolates made her do drippy shits so she gave them away (the chocs, that is).
( Zaphod's Wombat - Never did quite get the hang of, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 16:37, Reply)

one sticks in my mind...
my parents were failry well off... they always gave a good Christmas - stereos, TV, that sort of thing. Christmas list created, a selection on it by me to cater for all pockets. Dad got me a unicycle, CD Walkman and a few other bits and pieces. My mum bought me a book. A 3.99 novel. that's it. Thanks mum!
( Zaphod's Wombat - Never did quite get the hang of, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 16:34, Reply)

I get the same crap presents every year from my Nan
I can guarantee every year come Birthday and Christmas my Nan will get me socks with my name on (too small) and a Pint glass with my surname on. Grrrreat.
Does't seem too bad, but it's my birthday tommorrow and I have just received my present from my Nan in the post and it feels remarkably like a pair of sock wrapped round a box, which, by the weight of it, feels like a glass.
GREAT!
(Beanclart, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 16:31, Reply)

A few years ago
MY brother, Ben, found, yes that's right, Found, my other brother Matt a Christmas present.
Cue Matt on Christmas morning holding a rather weighty pressie going "Ooooo, wonder what it is!" It was a brick. Still, he got him back the next year by getting an old aftershave box and placing a small stick in it and giving it to him for his birthday
(Chiligrrl WHERE'S MAH DUBLOONS, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 16:27, Reply)

The Wanking Pigeons of Babylon
Not a present I received, but one I gave. To a long-term girlfriend about ten years back, with whom it's fair to say the spark had faded somewhat.

She kept pestering me to bestow upon her the romantic gift of a love poem. After several months of nagging I elected to bring matters to a head by presenting her with the following romantic verse, written in a "Good Luck" card:-

"The Wanking Pigeons of Babylon"
Look at the stoat
He is a goat.

We are no longer together.
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 16:24, Reply)

One year my grandad
gave all the females in the family matching 'gold' braclets. They were awful but so as not to offend him we wore them all christmas day.

On boxing we all had matching rashes around our wrists.
(moo_girl, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 16:14, Reply)

my dad
every year, he bought me a present HE wanted. A John Denver CD, back pain book, filofax etc. Even when I was at uni, he kept doing it.

Then one year he cocked up by 'giving' me a Hellboy book. Whoops, pocketed that, totally reasonable, was my present after all, ta very much.

Ever since, I have received very badly fitting cheap t shirts from Madhouse. Or endless sushi mats.

Bastard. Total

p.s. last year he bought my boyfriend a chav wallet. He really is a git
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:52, Reply)

Fucking fuck Clintons fucking cards the fuckers
For some reason best known to herself my mother keeps buying me "hugs" from clintons - the shop to waste away your money for no reason. Has anyone seen them? I can't imagine anything more pointless and crap. Its basically a bit of small plastic moulded to look like a fat dark brown thing with a face.
My mum, being a girl and therefore having the lets not buy crap area of her brain turned off thinks they are great! Well surprise she is wrong!
It breaks my heart to see her thinking that she's done something cute when what she has really done is fail miserably as a provider of decent presents! I mean it's not like the thing is 50p or something it's fucking 4 quid!
I hate Clintons! I hate them more since I saw an advert the other day for Grandparents day! Fuck off! Your fucking grandparents are retired - they get everyday off work and get to sleep all the time! I vote for a national "lets butt fuck the MD of Clintons around the british isles until he repents for his crimes against the world day"
Athena + Birthdays arent much better either!

Twats
(Manatee Fondler, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:51, Reply)

My brother is possibly the meanest git on the planet
when it comes to Christmas presents.
I buy him, his missus and 3 offspring pretty good stuff - clothes from Gap, books, videos/DVD's etc.
I take time and effort to buy stuff they might actually enjoy and like.
What do I fucking get?
One year, a crap green check shirt out of which the dye ran making my upper body look like it had gone mouldy.
Another year, Giles Brandreth's auto-fucking-biography.
Giles fucking Brandreth, I fucking ask you.
And my brother's a fucking solicitor.
Tight bastard.
(Doctor Evil, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:46, Reply)

Daft Nans
I also had a Nan who loved to knit, and arran jerseys were her speciality. However, I think as she got older she forgot to count how many rows she had done, as I regularly got HUGE arran jerseys with one sleeve about three inches longer than the other.
( b3th Not shit. Not mod., Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:45, Reply)

Girl's World
As with Sausagegirl (Below), I also wanted a Girl's World more than anything.

Come Xmas morning I excitedly rip off the wrapping paper to reveal..... a polystyrene head with a wig on it!

My Mum's reasoning? She had been *everywhere* and couldn't find one, so rather than have me disappointed, she improvised. Bless her really.... Actually, as we were living in Berlin at the time, she may well have been telling the truth.
( b3th Not shit. Not mod., Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:43, Reply)

on my last day working at my local cinima
I stole a life-sized cutout of britney (from that “classic” film crossroads)
And 3 body fluid removal kits.

I then wrapped them and gave them to a mate for his barfday.

Skip forward two days… 7:30 out on the piss, Mobile rings.


Manager
“If you do not return said items, we will be forced to ring the police”

so then I have to go to my friends house and take back the presents, and get a bollocking from a Greek psycho Manager (who wasn’t my manager anymore)

I came so close to telling him to shove britney up his ass.

I always wanted “theft of britney spears cut out” on my record
(JLB8, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:30, Reply)

A suitcase for my 18th birthday....
from my parents!

Hah, they'll never get to see their grandchildren now*

* if I ever stop fwapping long enough to have any
(WARNING: This name may contain the word CUNT, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:18, Reply)

I was born on Chrismas day
Two years ago I got gloves (65p reduced from £1.99) for my Birthday and Chirstmas present.
The year before a scarf.
and the year before that a toilet bag.

and last year nothing, nothing at all.
( The Duke of Prunes, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:14, Reply)

A cheque, made out to me...
from my aunty. I was 7.
( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:13, Reply)

My uncle
promised me when I was 13 that he had bought an Alpha Romeo Spider, and was "doing it up each year" to give to me when I was 18. Sort of a get out of buying you presents each year clause. Well obviously I was fucking stoked. A sports car. 18! Think of the girls I could pull. Anyway, five years later, No car. "honestly Will, next year," Still nothing. I am now 26. Nothing.
Sad thing is, is I am his sons Godfather, he's now 13 and you know exactly what I've started to say to him!

Yesssssssssssssssss.
( theWooinator, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:13, Reply)

A sandwich toaster
Not a lot wrong with that, I'll grant you, but it was for my stepmother, who didn't eat toasted sandwiches.

I do, though.

Mmmmm ... toasties ...
( Ravenous bug-blatter beast, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:10, Reply)

mmm, cat food.
Aah, brothers, so young, so..err, gullable...

Last year I got my bro the Bruce Almighty DVD, but being quite a tight little sod his presents in recent years hadnt quite been up to the standard of mine. The year before he had got me a plastic wall walker thingy from a pound shop (with the price tag still on). So I warned him...

I got him two presents, the DVD and a tin of cat food. I made sure I opened my pressie from him first, cunning bugger went halves with my mum on a digital camera. He got the DVD, and the cat food, cos Im a generous soul. he he
(eddieheadache, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 15:02, Reply)

Mad Grandparents, guaranteed to liven up christmas
Not sure if this quite fits...

One day I was round at my Grandma's sorting out some wiring for her, she popped her head round the door to say she was going down to the shops and would I like anything? I asked her to pick me up a mars bar as I was starving

Later on she came back and said "I didn't get you a Mars bar but I've got you a packet of batteries instead"

Yummy.....

Also one year she gave me a tin of tea for christmas, I'm violently allergic to tea and have been all my life, do you think she was trying to tell me something?
(Cliche Guevara Predicatably revolutionary since, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:59, Reply)

Ah
aunties. Had one who cleaned out the duff presents cupboard one year and unloaded a lot of it onto my family. That year I got a Daffy Duck nightshirt (two sizes too small) and a shaving kit (I hadn't shaved in something like four years at this point); my sisters got leather key-fobs and, I'm almost certain, car air-fresheners. Another more distant relative once gave all three of us a copy each of the same cassette compilation of Scottish fairy-tales and nursery rhymes when the youngest of us would have been about twenty.

/edit - and let's not forget the sublime horrors of the almost right present. "Wong likes films/music/books," they say. "Let's get him a video/record/book for Xmas/his birthday, but completely fail to take into account the possibility that important qualitative distinctions might exist between different films, different books or different albums."

Which is how I came to own a surprisingly large collection of Alan Parker films, despite the fact I think he should be killed, eviscerated and then killed again just to be on the safe side; seven copies of the "Live Aid" single despite hating it with a vengeance; and - a fairly recent one - numerous copies of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, despite being an actual sub-editor, a profession which would seem to me at least to imply an above-average working knowledge of punctuation, grammar, etc.

And don't start me on 'things you could really do with, but in a form so sub-standard as to be useless' - duff blank CD-Rs, random photo paper that physically cannot be used with your printer... I've had to argue my old man out of buying me a £100 digital camera on many, many occasions.
(Wong Fei-Hung - now with added flickr.com (see profile), Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:54, Reply)

My feckin uncle
Every christmas he used to give us these presents that we thought must've been the schizzel because they were dead heavy(i.e. not jumpers or paisley pyjamas) but every year they turned out to be terrible joke presents.

One year it was a broken car radio.
The next it was a log...yeah, a feckin' log.

But as the old sayin goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice I need a kick in the arse.

apologies for length
(WOGAN'S WIG FIXER, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:52, Reply)

Every year
I badgered my parents for a girl's world. All my friends had one and i was beginning to feel inadequate for not having my own.

Imagine my delight then when a pressie appeared under the tree that looked like it could be the best prezzie ever!

I squealed with delight as I ripped the wrapping off, only to find





a fucking globe.
( Sausagegirl, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:38, Reply)

Rude gardening tool.
Not me, but a friend...

My friend had a rather large black vibrator in his car as the result of a long-running 'let's see who can leave the funniest object in an embarrassing place' game. He gave it to the old duffer who tended the flower boarders at the local petrol station as an even funnier 'joke'

To this day, the old boy is extremely pleased with his 'electric dibber' and uses it regularly to 'plant out his seedlings'. Missus.
(clapper, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:31, Reply)

Incase you need a shoddy present for a Chav
Go to www.argos.co.uk and put CHAV into the search box...

Lavverly.

I was once given a keyring with "When I have sex, it's so good that the Neighbours need to have a ciggarette" on it.

As if the Cheesyness wasn't bad enough, IT was given to me by an Ex who was THEN dating a mate of mine.

She underlined her stupidity by giving it to me, infront of her fella (my mate) and saying... "I saw this, and thought of you".

My mate was not amused, and I nearly wasted a perfectly good mouthfull of guiness.

Crap prezzie? Yes... no self respecting person would use a key-ring like that... amd because it was poorly though out on SO many counts...
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:28, Reply)

My 21st birthday
was to be spent living in Madrid. My Ma gave me a box of presents, which contained:

A cheque for £50 that I wouldn't be able to pay into the bank for 4 months
A chocolate bar
Some dry roasted peanuts
Some coffee
A pack of cashew nuts
2 tins of soup

Special
( butchbint, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:25, Reply)

Lack of thought
My Auntie cornered the market in shit presents and the lack of thought put into the choice of presents was quite staggering

for my 10th birthday I got a book of british trees

for my 11th I got a book on fungi
( bigmeuprudeboy is using powerpoint or paint...have MERCY, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:25, Reply)

Coal
For Christmas when I was 21. Coal. A fucking bag of coal. From a garage.
(robotrob, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:24, Reply)

Records and a bit of my lung
I once sold a load of old records to a 2nd-hand record shop (thats LPs not CDs, how old am I?) and my brother went into the same shop, bought one back and gave it to me for xmas.
I got him back by giving him a piece of my lung the next year (I asked for a bit during some medical testing - they paid me £500, I gave them small bits of my lungs).
(darfbozo, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:21, Reply)

every christmas
me and my fasmily often put a lot of thought into what we will buy each other. even if they're just 'joke' gifts, they'll generally bear some relevance to the events of the past 12 months.
while we're not rich or anything, we dont really mind spending large amounts of money, anything up to £70 each is the top limit, but its never reached.

so you can imagine that every christmas morning is always interesting, and we never actually recieve any crap, presents.

well, it would be, if it wasnt for my fake auntie (read: uncle's ex-wife who insists on keeping in touch)
she spends all of 5 minutes and £3.50 buy our presents, including the bus ride & fare to get to the shops)

every year, i get a disgusting piece of clothing that i'll never wear (last years was a brown sweatshirt, the year before that, it was a lime green polo shirt).

but the medal for stupidity goes to the present she got my 3yr old brother. forgetting the standard conventions of present buying for children, she buys him an adult-size inflatable chair, which was twice the size of him, and was too big for him to actually sit on comfortably/safely

silly tart, no-one likes her anyway
( lo, the Greebo Warrior - Est. 2002, Thu 23 Sep 2004, 14:15, Reply)