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Objects of Desire

December 18, 2001

There are a number of websites which hold a range of whacky ideas for this year's Christmas present.

https://p.dw.com/p/1V1p
Surfing the net for gift ideas

Year after year the pressure to find original presents for family and friends rises. And as Christmas is less than a week away, a sense of desperation is spreading in western households.

The website objectsofdesire.de contains ideas for both extraordinary but still delightful Christmas presents. The range of objects on offer are not only fun to look at, they are all useful, and cost hardly a penny. There is however, one snag: all need to be made by hand.

"InstantGarden", for example, is a present idea for those office workers who have forgotton what a garden, let alone a plant looks like, and – according to the website – "who’s home will soon look as dry as Corsica after a forest fire". The "InstantGarden" consists of one sole plant in a tall jam jar complete with screw top and handle: It can be carried around from office to office and is a great substitute for the boring old handbag.

The "SandmasterPro" is a great alternative to the usual jigsaw puzzle. "SandmasterPro" is a kit for making perfect sandcastles: Simply download the various building plans and your sand-made Reichstag building will surprise and impress fellow holidaymakers.

Children will be delighted with objectsofdesire’s Christmas dinner dessert idea: "FrozenBarbie". Cover your daughter’s barbie doll with a layer of soft fimo, remove, fill the free space with strawberry sirup and put it into the freezer. Yummy!

For those female loved-ones, objectsofdesire has yet another original idea: the two-in-one "PocketRock", or shopping bag-come-skirt. This bag can in a matter of a minute be turned from shopping utensil to trendy, under- the-knee length skirt.

Talking about clothes, Soxinabox.de has a present idea for those in a hurry: Many an employee in a rush to work may have wondered why it is that socks forever go missing or have holes in them. A subscription to Soxinabox.de could be a help – and an original present idea: For the price of 67,50 Euro (US$ 60.90), Soxinabox will send you 4 pairs of socks three times a year. The website promises a life free of "sock worries".

More costly, but a lot more fun for younger members of the family is the "airboard". The airboard looks and functions similar to a hovercraft, is around one metre long, and makes a trendy alternative to the usual moped or mountainbike. According to the maufacturers, airboarding is a cross between snowboarding and surfing and driving a bumper car. The car, in fact, does similarize to a large extent a bright red bumper car, and whirrs forward rather like a huge hoover.

There is, however, one disadvantage ro this present - it does not fit into a usual Christmas stocking.