A Review of 6 Bad Valentines Day Gifts

Valentines Day is easily one of the most commercialized holidays on the calender. Though a lot of the gifts revolve around roses, chocolates, and jewelry; that won't stop companies from coming up with bad gift ideas to milk every last dollar.

Personalized Mouse pad

Such a nice place to put a picture of your sweetheart. Right under you steamrolling their face with your mouse. How often does anybody ever look at their mouse pad anyway? You might look for the mouse to grab but the pad itself is just background filler. This gift says the best place to display a picture is a place you don’t have to see it too much.

Anybody who has owned a mouse pad for longer than, oh I don’t know, a year, can tell you how much those things fade and collect dirt. You might as well have put the picture in an ashtray where you can double the fun of covering your loved one in filth by fantasizing about putting cigarettes out on their face.

Silver Plated Fortune Cookie
With this gift, you get to write your own fortune which is stuffed inside a silver fortune cookie. It also comes in an incredibly tacky Chinese take out box packed with tacky red raffia and an incredibly tacky Chinese character for love is printed on the outside of the box for your most tacky of tack-tackular holidays.

When describing fortune cookies, the last thing that comes to mind is “precious metals”. There are a lot better Valentines Day gifts made from silver, like jewelry, so it feels like getting a silver fortune cookie is an insult. That’s like telling your lover you plan on taking her to a sushi dinner for Valentines Day but instead coming home and slapping her in the face with a dead fish.

Tabletopics Couples Edition

The perfect present for couples that don’t communicate very well. There just isn’t anything as subtle as a card that you draw from a deck telling you what to talk about. Brilliant.

“Happy Valentine’s Day sweetie!”
“Thanks honey. I hope this is that necklace I wanted.” she says while opening her present
“Uh, necklace? What necklace?”
“Conversation starters?”
“Yeah, I just thought, you know, we don’t talk anymore and this might help.”
“Like how I got no response after telling you about that necklace I liked last week. You never listen.”
“How do you like your present?”
“It sucks.”
“…What are you trying to say?”

Prescription Red Hots

You know all those PSA’s that used to air on TV to remind parents to tell their children that drugs are not candy? Well fuck that to hell with red hot candies in a disturbingly accurate prescription drug container. They even come in the same white bags prescription drugs come in.

I don’t have any problems with this product per se, but you can’t help thinking some idiot will give this to his or her children causing the kids to think “nothing goes better with Kool Aid then Vicodin!” Edit - The author would like the apologize for that last joke. That was in bad taste. Ahem. Next Valentines Day, you can buy your kids a Spongebob Oxycotton Pez dispenser!

Lovopoly

What better game to give a love theme too when the original was about making your opponents homeless? If one thing makes me think about love, sex, or general human compassion, it’s certainly Wall Street. I also don’t think there is anything more romantic than getting free parking either.

What exactly is the currency in this game anyway? It’s probably something cutesy like kisses or batting your eyelashes. Wait, how is the currency collected? If they really wanted to make this game as close to real Monopoly as possible, you would collect money when the opposing player lands on a spot you currently have hookers on. They take the place of houses and hotels. I know hookers aren’t really what you think of when you think about love but they’re certainly closer to the Monopoly theme of draining your money and laughing at your genitals. If there is no crying in Baseball then there is no love in Monopoly.

Valentines Day Toilet Paper


Now we’re really into the shit…literally.

At first I thought this might be some kind of anti-Valentines Day gift but no, ready the message. “I love you from top to bottom”? What kind of message is that to put on toilet paper? Why does there even need to be a message on toilet paper? Besides, “…top to bottom”? Who wipes that way? Edit - Okay. Now that joke was in bad taste.


Disclaimer - This column is satirical and not to be taken too seriously. If you get one of these gifts for Valentines day...I'm sorry. Kinda. Not really.

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