What's the worst/strangest gift you've ever received?

[Opals462]

You know those huge advertising posters that are put on bus stops behind the perspex? Today I was gifted one of them, an enormous poster over 6ft tall advertising none other than Mentos, the mints/sweets.

Folded up into a padded postage envelope and addressed to me and my other half.

Gift giver is my eccentric aunt.

I couldn't tell you what her thought process was behind it, but she claimed ownership of it when passing her nearest bus stop and seeing the posters being changed. Apparently I was to be the perfect recipient.

Ironically, my ASD son is obsessed with mentos and we've recently had to ban him having them as he gets too overwhelmed (she doesn't know that though, so it's purely coincidence)

What's the worst/strangest gift you've ever received?

£10,000 from my minted but eccentric uncle for making it to '17' without smoking 😂

@FelicityBeedle

DP managed to stop my in laws getting me an incredibly fancy bells and whistles smart toothbrush for Christmas last year. I got a printer for my 16th birthday, I hadn’t asked for it and could print for free at school

I had an electric toothbrush from my in-laws one year! Think it might have been the same year as I also got a yea strainer, box of cooking matches (in a lovely hand painted box) and a tea towel! All a bit odd, but I still have them over 17 years later (other than the toothbrush and the matches but I still have the box) and I Love them!

@PinniGig

For years my husband and I have been doing the £10 challenge at Christmas rather than waste money on crap neither of us really needs. Rules are simply that we each have to buy each other the worst, most tacky and Godawful gifts possible – preferably from charity shops and without spending a penny more or less.

I once got a 1000 jigsaw of the Queen, a ceramic garden hedgehog ornament, Michael Jackson plush toy and 12" vinyl single of "The Right Stuff" by New Kids.

I actually love the £10 challenge it's more fun than if you have a wad of money to go spending and get anything you want.

I think perhaps not bother with the tender gift as presumably it's all plastic crap that immediately ends up in landfill?

Dm gave my husband a pair of handcuffs the year after we married… to chain me to the sink’ as a joke… they were very obviously meant for use in the bedroom . Dm completely unaware, df nearly choked and dh and me laughed but didn’t tell her.

My DMIL has a habit of giving me books that are the second in a series "because you've probably read the first one". She also once gave me an encyclopaedia of cat breeds, I think because I like cats and I read a lot, so a book about cats seemed like a winner.

I once got confused wrapping my dad's and my niece's presents, so my DN got a block of kitchen knives and my DDad got a fishing game. Thank God we were all in the same room and I could explain and swap them over

A piece of wood with a cut out picture of jesus on it. From my ateist sister. She has made it herself too. I have never understood it.

@Paperplain No we keep whatever we want and / or put the rest back as donations to other charity shops or if its games and intact items in good nick, donate to local care homes etc.

@Enko

A piece of wood with a cut out picture of jesus on it. From my ateist sister. She has made it herself too. I have never understood it.

Ooh you just reminded me - bought my old boss a "Jesus Christ Action Figure" once and he lived in our office up for a fair few years after.

@KnottyKnitting I kinda love that
Both your dad being pleased about it and your dd and dhs reaction made me feel you are very loved. (even if dad was a few years behind)

@PinniGig I think I woild have preferred that

Some bits of curved metal from my late grandfather's second wife. Nobody could work out what they were for!

My dad tried to send me to a birthday party with an almost-new pritt stick to give to the birthday girl when I was a child because he didn't have time to take me shopping. I refused. Can't remember if we did go shopping in the end or not but I think no present at all would have been far better than what he was proposing.

A pink watch with a cat face on it. Hate pink. Don’t like cats. I was 29 years old!

I got a pair of hairbands, which id seen in Boots reduced to .20p (2005) id bought the ladybird ones for my DD already.
The giver was a long term friend, affluent, and generally very lovely, for her birthday earlier i had gifted her 2 sets of lingerie (she was newly married) at a cost of circa £50 from La Senza..
Stuck to flowers after that..🙈

One of the oddest was actually one of the most expensive, a keyboard from my mum and dad when I was a young teenager who had no interest in music at all and neither did they. I used it once to show willing but never again. I did ask a few years later why and they said they wanted me to learn an instrument because they never had the chance. Odd as we never listened to music in the house at all.

Other strange ones, a graphic novel from my now ex when it's not a genre I am into, more recently a pair of children's sunglasses in a colour I am known to dislike like from a friend. She bought herself the same ones but in a different colour which I do like so if she had given me those I would have appreciated the thought.
Maybe not quite the same thing but a gift from the same ex which normally I would have liked but which I know was a guilt gift.

When I was in the sixth form someone who wanted to go out with me turned up at the door with a cabbage as a surprise present for my mum. The same year, my boyfriend (not cabbage-giver) bought me a fresh pineapple for my birthday. I mean they were both potentially useful items but...?

A B&Q DIY hard back book. The person who gave it to us works in B&Q so likely got it free... We are the least DIY people you could think of.

When I was a kid, my mum sent me off to the shop to buy the teacher from my dance group a gift, can’t remember the occasion.
I bought her a can of deodorant, told it wasn’t really a very suitable gift, but my mum was alway very last minute, so there wasn’t anytime to get anything else, we didn’t put our name on gift.
Dread to think what the poor woman thought, at a random gift of deodorant.
Im better at buying gifts these days.

Not my present, but my mother received the most unbelievable plant pots from our lovely neighbour, who was not known for being a wonderful gift chooser. I'll try to describe them but they really had to be seen to be believed.

They were made of resin and in the shape of a t-shirt, but textured and painted to look as if they were made of that burlap material sacks are made from. Each had a large face on it which was sort of raised from the burlap t-shirt was a 3D face. One had a sort of cat face (think cat-human hybrid like in the mad Cats film) and the other had an owl, which was more realistic but by no means less disturbing. They had eyes made of those decorative glass beads that you put at the bottom of vases or fish tanks. I think she still has them, I'll try to take a photo!

DH got me a wii fit board for my 40th birthday, I was long term disabled in a wheelchair

The kids loved it and I’ve long since trained him in the art of gift buying bless him

One Christmas in my teens (early 2000's) my Nan bought me a spandex outfit with glitter fireworks all over it and a book about Gareth Gates 🤨

I faked a smile and said "oh my gosh! I love it!" And then my mum made me put the outfit on 😑

I think I've posted about this before, my mum once bought me a mouse mat for Christmas with a picture of me on it, accompanied by various other bits with the same photo on, coaster, keyring etc.. it was an awful photo of me and I hated having my photo taken or seeing any pictures of myself 😄 I don't know what she was thinking

A thin silvery minidress, the kind a teenager would wear, in a size 8. I was 42 and an obvious size 16! A few months previous the same person gifted me a size 24 bathrobe

A doormat.

A giant zip that zipped up to be a bag 😂😂😂 whhhhhhhyyyyyy