Unique Novelties and Gifts

This weighted blanket offers a natural way to decompress, provide comfort, and calm your body for a restful night.  

Learn the delicate art of embroidery with this introductory kit, complete with three seasonal patterns. 

Make your own candles with this DIY kit, complete with dried flowers, essential oils, soy wax, and mason jars. 

Stay busy with this original 1000-piece puzzle of Cannon Beach—a coastal town in Oregon known for its long, sandy shore and sea stacks like Haystack Rock, which was famously featured in The Goonies.

Of the many Albert Einstein action figures and bobbleheads out there—and there are many—this is by far the cutest version of everyone's favorite scientist.

Everything you need—except the wood sticks—to build your own igloo, fruit cage, or other domed structure of up to five meters in diameter.

This 24-hour video of construction workers continually rebuilding the time out of lumber and bolts is a mesmerizing piece of art. I took an old smartphone, installed this app, and now have a beautifully strange clock on my wall.

Joshua Foer Co-Founder

Little space gems, flecks of Viking axes, and bits of a space station can all be yours with this tiny museum for your mantle.

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

Puzzle boxes are one of my favorites things. I want to be buried in a puzzle box. This one not only looks beautiful and shows off some of its incredible gears, but you even get to build it yourself! 

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

Take a break with your neighboring desk mate. This tiny tetherball set is accompanied by an illustrated mini-book filled with the history, trivia, and rules of the popular pastime.

Tao Tao Holmes Director of Special Projects, Experiences

I get my best ideas in the shower. From now on, I'll use this waterproof notepad to write them down.

Alexa Harrison Public Relations Director

When I was a kid, I used to charge my older cousins fees for returning borrowed books late. This personal library kit would have made cataloging my collection a whole lot easier.

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

Hide your most important secrets deep in your bookcase. If you're a bibliophile, this book safe will fool the most cunning of thieves.

Jordan Schultz Director of Marketing & Audience

“Who doesn't want a dose of existentialism with their egg nog?” — Tamara, Seattle, Washington

I recently received this as a gift. My friend just told me she'd gotten me a notebook, so it was a very cool and startling surprise to be blinded by light when I opened it. I felt like I'd found a magic artifact.

Abi Inman Senior Audience Development Manager

Got dirty hands? Not anymore you don't. A perfect stocking-stuffer for a two-fisted attack on grime.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

If there's anything can be more divisive than licorice itself, it's likely licorice-flavored toothpaste. What's not debatable, however, is that this beautifully-packaged Italian import will look great next to your bathroom sink.

Tyler Cole VP, Community

Unsettlingly realistic and featuring posable feelers, this mask is sure to brighten (or ruin) everyone's day.

Spend a peaceful minute watching ferrous sand, glass, gravity, and magnetism combine to form a spectacle of stalagmites that shifts with each passing second.

When lightning strikes the ground, it can fuse some kinds of sand, clay, or soil into glass. This produces a hollow tube called a fulgurite that can suggest the form of a lightning bolt.

At first glance, gallium looks like any old metal, but drop it into your hand and it will melt into liquid from your body heat alone.

A distinctly non-naturally-occurring material that was created during the Trinity nuclear bomb test in New Mexico, trinitite is basically just glass, made when the heat from the blast melted the surrounding sand. That said, it’s extremely rare glass, since it’s now illegal to remove any more material from the Trinity site.

Give your Wunderkammer an element of danger with this sample of uranium ore. The material included in this metal tin is safe to handle if you use common sense (don’t lick it), but is also certified to be measurably radioactive.

Run a magnet over this bottle of ferrofluid, made of nanoparticles of a magnetic iron-containing compound suspended in a liquid medium, and it will burst into spiky shapes.

Tuck these tiny wind-up butterflies into an old book or a birthday card and watch the recipient's surprise as they suddenly fly away.

Larissa Hayden

Place this miraculous, flopping fish in your palm and learn your future. Don't like what it reveals? No worries, it's a 72-pack.

Keeping a toddler occupied on a long plane ride is a big job. Lighten the load by bringing along a space-themed sticker book. The stickers are thankfully easy to unstick from plane seats, and the space theme is good prep for your child's future as an astronaut.

Dylan Thuras Co-Founder

A timeless practical joke in the form of a wine glass. Designed by an ancient Greek philosopher, it functions like a normal wine glass but spills everywhere when over-filled by the gluttonous.

Larissa Hayden

Brings a sense of quest to your desk with this never-ending hallway of miniature danger.

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

Perfect for jewelry or other small items, why not wrap your gift in a box that's a gift in itself? 

Eric Grundhauser Senior Producer

The perfect accessory for your next cemetery cocktail party, make any drink more curious with skull-shaped ice.

Paula Mejia Gastro Obscura Associate Editor