8

Cold, Hard Cash

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I know what you're thinking: "Why is money a bad gift?" In essence, it's the least personal thing you can possibly get for someone. A gift card isn't much better, but it at least says that the person tried to figure out which stores you like to frequent. But money? You throw money at problems like mouthy hookers and second cousins whose interests you are completely and blissfully unaware of.

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"Actually, do Sue's kids even use dollars? They live all the way in Oregon."

What's worse, the freedom to buy whatever you want with your gifted money doesn't really exist when you aren't old enough to carry a wallet or hold onto your own cash. Instead, the money is "put aside" for you, which means that, while a folded $20 or two in a card may give you a momentary jolt of excitement, in all actuality, your uncle got a clear conscience, your parents got $40 worth of drunk, and you got Jackie Coogan'd.

Crossbill/Wikimedia
"Merry Christmas to us all! Including our dear kid, whatshisname."

7

The Wrong Video Game Console

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Somewhere out there in my mother's version of the cloud (a shoebox in the closet), photographic evidence exists to support the claim that I was a happy child. This picture shows me holding a Nintendo 64 while grinning ear-to-ear on a long-ago Christmas morning, but it could just as easily have been a picture of me holding a Sega Nomad with that same dopey smile on my face.

Evan Amos
"Ninety minutes of gameplay before it dies? Golly gee, lucky me!"

I genuinely feel bad for the kids who got the wrong video game system. For every kid who got a Sega Genesis, there are others who got a Jaguar because their clueless parents went to the guy in the cage at Toys "R" Us, pointed, and took home whatever magic box of sound, light, and distraction jumped out at them.

Oh guy in the cage at Toys "R" Us, you were like some kind of mystic freak elf who took slivers of paper and returned with electronic baubles from your vast stack of cartridges and video game systems. I wanted to be locked in that cage overnight so badly. I wanted to live your life, but now I realize that you didn't serve the cause of good. If you had, you would have intercepted and struck down the Nomad people with a burning fury. But alas, you were merely a cog in the grand bone-crushing machine of commerce.

Guy in the cage at Toys "R" Us, you were no hero. You were a victim.

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And possibly dyslexic.

6

The Gift That You Would Have Loved Last Year

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Like any normal, red-blooded American boy, my toy tastes evolved from things like BraveStarr, to Masters of the Universe, to SilverHawks, to imported soccer Starting Lineup figures from Europe in the late '80s. OK, yeah, I got punched a lot as a kid.

Martin Hopkins
"Each night, I snuck from the storage closet to your room to wedgie Maradona."

When I picked one toy up, inevitably, another had to be put down, and then it was dead to me forever ... or until I grew up, went on eBay, and decided that possessing the trinkets of my youth again would make me forever young.

Because of my ever-changing tastes, I must have been a monster to shop for and a spoiled brat whenever someone dared hand me a toy after it had become irrelevant to me. Our definition of ourselves and our likes is as inflexible as we are filter-free when we are children. Just ask my stupid, douchebag, fart-licking cousins.

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Sorry, I'm still working on that filter thing.

5

The Off-Label Brands

Tonka

We're all a bunch of label whores. Macklemore has built a sonic empire on the back of making us aware of this, but our sickness extends far beyond clothes, and its roots go all the way back to our "Mega Bloks are just as good as LEGOs" childhood.

Spacefem/Wikimedia
Many good men were lost in the Oreo-Hydrox wars.

Before I continue, let's all accept that, in hindsight, the Real American Heroes G.I. Joe figures weren't that different from American Defense figures. With that said, though, how insulted were you if you were given those as a gift when you clearly said you wanted G.I. Joe?

Hasbro
Both were American, but G.I. Joe was from the pro-America part of America.

I had my share of copycat army men, but despite the practical benefits, I could never bring myself to combine my forces. And forget about bringing them out around my friends. I'm pretty sure the Gobot kids had to sit at a separate table in the cafeteria, so I can't even imagine what would have happened to me if I would have tried to show off my CORPS! figures without an accompanying pack of Black Cat firecrackers.

4

The Thing That You Already Had

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When you're a kid, you get gifts from people that you barely know, like your parents' friends and Uncle Chad's "special partner." It's a pretty sweet deal that is the inverse of how things are later in life, but it can all go horribly awry if they don't psychically know what toys you already have.

John Morgan
"The second one is to replace the pieces from when someone inevitably throws this across the room."

There is no comp for the mental anguish that one feels when they open up a present and discover something that's already in a box marked "things to burn if we lose electricity." A social contract has been violated, and there is little to no remedy. Sure, we can go return the duplicate toy, but much like the unfair song of the cash gift, the store credit slip always seems to fall back into the family pot. Which sounds like socialism to me.

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Violating the very spirit of Monopoly.

Holy crap, I just realized that Christmas hates America. Bill O'Reilly had it backwards!

3

The Thing You Actually Wanted ... Kind of Sucks

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2

Nothing but the Thing You Love

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1

The Things That Weren't a Surprise

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