Christmas Gift Oddities Part I

Sometimes you’ll get presents so interesting or bizarre that they defy easy categorization. These next gifts are things I very much enjoyed at the time (and in some cases still do), but they stand out to me as being unique, embarrassing, or just insane. Basically, it’s an excuse to write about more than ten Christmas presents without having to come up with some new numbering scheme. Enjoy!

1. Nickelodeon Gak (1992)
Surprisingly there’s already been a lot of internet literature composed on this particular topic—a simple Google search will reveal just how widespread love of Gak is among 90s nostalgia fiends. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. The stuff was useless goo that made a farting sound when you squeezed it. Other than that, I’m not sure what its purpose was. Today it seems, dare I say it, cheap.

But try telling that to my 5th grade self. My group was really into three things back then: Goosebumps books, Narnia books, and Nickelodeon Gak. And no matter what their other merits, books can’t fart (though the later Goosebumps books tried their best). So when it came time for my friends and me to exchange Christmas gifts, Gak was the only way to go. I must have gotten at least six separate cans (for lack of a better word) of the stuff that year, and given just as many as gifts.

Oh, the fun we had with our Gak! It had a million uses! You could look at it inside the can, take it out and look at it, put it on a table, hold it in your hands and, the coup de grace, squeeze it to make farting sounds. Mattel had finally found a way to combine children’s love of farting with their love of goo, and the profits must have been enormous. It was like combining a whoopee cushion with snot.

Sadly my love affair with Gak did not last beyond that Christmas. Like any goo worth its salt, Gak becomes dry, brittle, and useless if left outside of its container. Much of my supply met such an end, the rest was simply abandoned. Other Nickelodeon oozes came and went in the years to come: Floam, Gooze, Smud—but it was never the same. Gak was one of those once in a lifetime moments, the kind you can only look back on years later with a kind of winded awe and remark, “Wow. I was there, man. I was there.”

2. Bust of the Emperor Caesar Augustus Modeled After the Statue at Prima Porta (2005)
That’s right, I’m the type of person that keeps a bust of a Roman emperor on their coffee table. Not only was Augustus one of the most badass leaders in history, but when you have a piece of Roman statuary in your living room you know you’re on the right track in life.

Augustus was an unknown teenage nephew of Julius Caesar who through cunning and luck defeated all of his rivals and united the Roman Republic under his sole leadership by the time he was 32, beginning 200 years of peace and prosperity and becoming Rome’s first emperor. My statue, on the other hand, was made in Italy in the 1890s as part of a contemporary craze in Roman decoration, bought by some rich couple on a tour, and sold to another rich couple.

It then spent fifty years or so gathering dust in the basement of one of the old houses in my hometown. When the owners died, it was sold to an antique shop, discovered by my father who thought (correctly) that it was the coolest thing in the world, and placed under our Christmas tree. It would soon become what it was always meant to be—a display head for comical hats, like the kind worn by snowboarders in the mid 90s.

I can honestly say that I never expected to get a bust of a Roman emperor for Christmas, but now that I have, I can’t imagine what life would be like without it.