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?

My dad once received a birthday present of 3 socks (a pair and a half?) from an aunt (a distant one I guess given that she'd never noticed he had an even number of feet)

Not given to me, I was the weird gift giver and I still cringe about it!

My ex’ mum had a big birthday around 20 years ago, I think maybe 40th? I got her a belly dancing instruction book and those little hand bells plus a cheap bracelet that attached to your finger. I have no idea what I was thinking now I look back on it, as I really can’t see her being a ‘belly dancer’ type of person but she accepted with good grace! 😂😂

I got a very large axe off my youngest son one Christmas, in fairness I'd recently had a logburner fitted, however, I'm over 60 and it was too heavy for me to lift!

From my MIL, a sort of nylon quilted satin thing to cover/disguise a tissue box (make it look pretty??). I think it was broadly along the same thinking lines as those doll toilet roll covers old ladies used to have. I was 23.

A book about trees. I've never expressed my like/dislike/any opinion on trees ever, though it did make me that someone saw fit to kill trees to create paper to print a book about loving trees.

This was something that was very important, apparently, and chosen with great care, as I'd suggested we no longer do presents as we're fed up of getting things we don't want/need and it being a waste. Turns out I was right that we should stop doing presents with my parents.

My ex husband and I were the bad gift givers and I am very ashamed of myself now. His father’s third wife was a woman we did not like for various reasons. One Christmas we gave her an egg separator in the shape of an old man. The white of the egg poured out of his nose when the separation was occurring.

A small packet of low fat pasta. I wasn’t on a diet at the time either.

My aunt was not too good at present giving. One year she gave mum a luminous yellow ginger jar. The stuff of nightmares and not something that mum ever expressed a wish for luminous or not.
The best though was one Christmas when she gave mum a paper bag the brown sort saying she had not had time to wrap it and inside was a clearly used bar of cheap toiletry soap!

A draw your own comic book thing. I would have assumed someone badly regifted an unwanted present for a primary school aged child but they ordered it directly to me. My eldest was a newborn so couldn't have been something they thought for them either.

An ornament in the shape of a skull. My house is pretty neutral (this person has been to my house) and I'm probably the least alternative person out there.

One of those dress up make up sets you'd buy for a child from a distant aunt when I was 16. Probably not that strange but I was absolutely mortified at the time .

My grandparents bought my brother a hand held hoover for his 9th birthday (to be precise a dirt devil, but I don’t know if they still make them) and for Christmas the same year, they bought him an extendable dog lead- we didn’t have any pet at the time, let alone a dog! When I asked my grandparents about them as an adult, they said they thought he would enjoy them!!
My aunt bought me a set of dog slippers for my 30th birthday- I don’t mean slippers with dogs on, they were 4 small slippers to put on dogs feet. No idea why as we don’t own a pet that could wear those either!!

Oh and a magic set for kids for Christmas from my great aunt. I had just started university!

So it's actually a great gift! No point giving a DIY book to an already expert DIY-er after all.

@shreddednips

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!

Please take a picture, they sound bloody dreadful 🤣