Shopping is fun. Digging up 11 weird, fun gifts from museum gift shops a few weeks ago was such a blast, we didn’t want to stop! C’mon, dinosaur slippers? Bowls with feet? So with the holidays right around the corner, we’re back for round two!
If you’re on the hunt (zing!) for a memorable last-minute present, we humbly suggest a Watson Adventures Gift Certificate. Now through Dec. 25, every $100 you spend in gift certificates earns you an extra $20 gift certificate—so everybody wins! Or if your loved ones prefer stuff ranging from the cute to the strange, you should still have time to nab some of these bad boys.
1. Haring Pop Figure Chair
Let’s hear a cheer for this Haring chair! If you’re in the market for what looks like a wacky children’s chair, the de Young and Legion of Honor museums in San Francisco have got you covered. Your kids might never balk at sitting in a featureless red stranger’s lap, but this sure will would brighten up a room.
2. Venus MOVA Globe
Behold the glassy glory of our solar system’s hottest planet! At long last, with this beautiful tabletop orb from Boston’s Museum of Science, you can easily settle any debate concerning Venusian geography. “That orangeish blobby area you’re talking about? No, no, that’s in the NORTHERN hemisphere. Now stop sneaking into my house, Neil DeGrasse Tyson.”
3. Hoptimist Bumbles
We don’t even know what’s going on with these things, but they’re SO CUTE. It’s like Q*bert married a bobblehead doll, and then their kids all had kids with the Ghosts from Pac-Man. Bumbles come in a ton of colors, and of course they’re available at Atlanta’s High Museum, of all places.
4. Kinetic Sand
Speaking of gifts we don’t quite understand but really like, we bring you Kinetic Sand, from the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago. It’s almost all normal sand, but some kind of science-y…stuff…forces it to adhere only to itself and not to everything else in your home. It makes a great sand castle in the living room! Based on personal experience, it does not, however, make a good snack on the off chance someone dares you to eat it at a party. Ahem.
5. Ekko Mobile
Another winningly weird entry from the High Museum, the Ekko Workshop mobile is like a tiny little Alexander Calder sculpture for your desk. Except this one spins. And doesn’t take up half a city block. And won’t make you a world-famous artist. Darn.
6. Suit of Armor Magnet
Winter is coming. Defend your fridge with this bizarrely elaborate suit-of-armor magnet from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and nary a Smaug nor White Walker shall plunder your night cheese!
7. Gorey Creatures Calendar
We once received a Drew Carey Show calendar for Christmas. We were not amused. This Edward Gorey calendar, though? It positively writhes with the sort of creepy-cute gothic monsters that made Gorey the much-loved Tim Burton of the art world.
8. Tribble Coinpurse
Winning the weird but cute award is this Tribble coinpurse, courtesy of Seattle’s EMP Museum—it looks mostly (kinda, sorta) like those adorable, unstoppably multiplying Tribbles from Star Trek. Now if only it could unstoppably multiply the money you put in it…
9. Star Wars Shakespeare
“In time so long ago begins our play, in star-crossed galaxy far, far away.” And so opens (openeth?) William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, available at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (and elsewhere). Essential reading for most sci-fi fans, Ian Doescher’s book offers up the funniest Shakespeare since the Bard himself named a guy Bottom that one time.