
It is usually really hard to come up with good gifts for people you don’t know very well. The first thing to your mind might be to look for stuff the recipient will like and have practical use for. But how do you know what this person will consider practical? Another mistake some people do is to buy gifts that appeal to themselves without considering the taste of the recipient.
Too bad that everyones lifestyles make completely different things useful for everyone. I for instance don’t know very much about repairing and tuning cars. If my car breaks I just leave it at the mechanics, get a rental for a couple of days and that’s it. This makes the book about do it yourself car repairs and various tools I have received from my car loving father completely useless for me. Even if it might have saved me money in the long run and been considered “useful”.
The truth is that if you are one of the lucky people that live in our modern western society, you probably already own everything you like, want or consider practical. Of course sometimes someone will give you something you will use for years to come, but chances are if you needed something you would have just bought it for yourself.
So if we ruled out practical gifts, what is left? Gifts that invoke some kind of memory or positive emotion. This is why souvenirs are so popular even though they often are cheesy, pointless or even plain ugly. They invoke the memories from the trip. In the same way a nicely framed picture you got from your partner might invoke happiness every time you see it.
It is here that I will recommend the gag gift or prank gift. At first glance gag gifts are usually cheap throwaway things, but imagine if you can find a perfect prank gift that will have everyone at the party laughing about it for hours? Of course this gift will be better remembered than all the socks, cookbooks, money envelopes and other gifts taken together. And its not like a gag gift is very expensive, so you can always just give one away together with a “serious” gift for an unbeatable combo!

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