What have your 12 year old boys loved as presents? Ideas please!

[Shufflebumnessie]

I'm looking for birthday present ideas for a soon to be 12 year old boy.
He loves Anime,
anything Chinese & Japanese (modern & traditional),
Cats.
Fortnight
Roblox

Hates:
Football.

Any ideas gratefully received.
Thanks

Lego
Books
A build your own robot
An experience day

Mine's a 12yo dd, but her interests are fairly neutral and her interests have some similarities.

She liked the named chopsticks she got for christmas and a mini zen garden.

Other hits were a Greggs card, a robux card, nano block model of a red panda (they have cats too), the hunger games books, and a couple of games bandito and tinderblox.

His first driving lesson! We did it through Young Driver.

Money so they can spend it on what they like or put it with other birthday money if they have their eye on something expensive.

Maybe some posters of his favourite anime/t shirts? They do a lot of merchandise now

Crunchy roll subscription

Manga box sets

Mine loves Junji Ito books (bit gory though)

There's loads of anime merch, do you know his favourites?

I got dd a book with easy Japanese phrases in it so she's learning that.

Lego always go down well, maybe the bonsai tree would be good.

This sounds fascinating! What is it?

@Bilingualspingual The website is youngdriver.eu. They are very well-established and run driving lessons on private land for those too young to drive on the road. Each child is matched with a qualified driving instructor and they have a blast! They also obviously learn driving skills which stand them in good stead for progress in road-driving when they turn 17. Highly recommended (both my DC have had their first driving experiences with them).

Money
PlayStation voucher
V Bucks
McDonalds Voucher
Books
Comics
Gaming chair
Chocolate
Tshirts and shorts for relaxing
Smyths voucher

Yoyo. My son's obsessed with his and learning lots of impressive tricks. Search for "responsive yoyo" as unresponsive ones are harder for beginners. My son's is metal from Amazon. He had now progressed to an unresponsive as well. Lots of tutorials on YouTube.

Mine got a black cat t-shirt (loves cats)
A solar panel charger, like the type you can take camping
Some of those ROKR kits that build various wooden mechanisms
Lego Technic
Bubble tea kit
A surprising hit was a men's manicure set with lots of clippers, files etc. He uses it a lot (not always for finger nails!)

Airpods
Power bank
Xbox gift voucher
Rubix cube
Chocolate
'Food' gift voucher Starbucks/Costa/Greggs etc

A decent quality cricket ball.

Fuyamp 30 Pcs Slingshot Chicken... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B3QSVL7P

We've gone through 3 packs since Christmas.

I second the young driver experience, our ds has done it and loved it. Depending where in the country you are but Mercedes world do a fab one too where you get half an hour on track and then half an hour off road, the off road bit was particularly good.

Mine wants a table tennis table for his 12th birthday that’s coming up frighteningly soon.

Lego
Philip Reeve fiction books
Warhammer models? (Newish interest for my child of same age)
Second a yoyo already mentioned
How to draw manga characters and pens

Would he like a visit to a cat cafe?

Weirdly enough a Tamagotchi 😳 - I got my son one as an extra stocking filler type thing for Christmas and he absolutely loves it and all his friends are dedicated to keeping it alive as well 🤣 it’s very retro really but gadgety so was a surprise hit.

bubble tea making set

The Young Samurai series of books by Chris Bradford (there are 9 books in total. My eldest son was 12 3 weeks ago and is currently devouring these).

Also, if he doesn't already have these, the 3D labyrinth puzzles from Doug factory... my lad loves The Barbarian.https://dougfactory.com/

For his 11th birthday he got the Lego bonsai tree and loved it.

He also likes the re-released Ian Livingstone Choose Your Own Adventure books (Deathtrap Dungeon, The Forest of Doom etc) my brother used to read these in the 1980s!

Some great things on this thread, will check back at the next present buying opportunity for my 12 year old.

For Christmas my son got the Exploding Kittens card game which is good fun, once you get the hang of it. He thinks it's fab.

I've just bought him one of these shirts from eBay though you might not want one for your son...

My son is a little younger but a moon ball (bounces as high as a house) or a stomp rocket (similar thing) were very well received. He also really loves his shoes/ trainers.

My son loves rubiks cubes and got a go cube for Christmas that went down very well
Warhammer gear
Nice chess set
Another thing he loves are escape rooms so you could have a look to see if there's an age appropriate one nearby. There's a wizarding one in London. Or you get pirate themes, spy themes etc. Perhaps not a gruesome murder!

Oh and knives! I know that may sound bonkers but he loves his pen knives etc for whittling and opening parcels, and has a special cooking knife that he uses to make an after school snack of carefully cubed cheese . Opinel do good ones.