Canned Laughter

When they were little, stockings were such a pleasure.  Little wooden toys, candy, fruit… the kids stockings were so easy to fill.  Now that they are teenagers, those stocking stuffers and inexpensive surprise gifts can become a real beast to try to find.

Like a lot of teenage boys, my son is fascinated with Japanese pop culture or J-Pop.  His Christmas list invariably says:   Anything Japanese.  Yeah.  I’ll just run down to Hell-Mart and pick up that Bento Box you asked for.  Thankfully, the internet came to my rescue with sites like:

• Fredflare.com which carries a huge assortment of kawaii that appeals to both boys and girls.  Their home page screams “300 Gift Ideas $10 & Under!”.  I like that!  What teen wouldn’t love their robots, whimsical electronics accessories and imported candies? The tag line for Fredflare.com is “Stay Cute”.  I believe we will.
• Giantrobot.com sells cool wind-up & kinetic toys, ultra-hip projects and crafts and a nice selection of this year’s hot teen gift, Lomo cameras.
• Jbox.com offers an exclusively J-Pop line.  If it’s hot among the under twenty-five crowd, it’s here- and it’s cheap.  Even the shipping (overseas, too!) is cheap.  I love that they tell you in every item description whether the item is coming from their warehouse in San Diego or their warehouse in Japan so you can pick your shipping options accordingly.  Among all the J-Pop on-line stores, J-Box is my favorite for selection and price.  A word of caution though.  Beware their sister site, J-List.  It offers J-Pop Porn items (Yes, I know Japanese culture is different from ours, but I call a spade a spade and  I call violent porn, violent porn even when it’s animated).  Sorry Comic Book Guy.

I hope this list of on-line gift stores is helpful.  You don’t have to have a teenager or have to like Japanese Pop Culture to find something fun and inexpensive to fill out your holiday gift list.  And if I happen to be on your list?  You can send me one of these banks.