Wearable technology may be the biggest case of "trying to make fetch happen" of the decade. For those of us who grew up watching and reading Dick Tracy, being able to talk into your wrist is the pinnacle of cool. But for most people—and for every other use case—the Apple Watch is too clunky to be worth the price tag.
It's time to admit that the greatest thing Dr. Dre did for the world was introducing Snoop Dogg. Still, Beats is a shoddy headphone at a studio-quality headphone price and are worse in impedance, frequency response, and harmonic distortion than headphones that cost half as much. Some may assert that Dre has somehow "sold out," but the truth of the matter is that making money hand over fist over nothing isn't a betrayal of his music at all—it's the purest expression of the West-Coast gangster-rap ethos there is.
Let's be clear about one thing: Lego is awesome. It provides fuels and unleashes creativity, which is an exceedingly rare thing. However, in a world where collectors obsess over exclusive minifigs and rattle off kits by their serial number, where individual bricks fetch a king's ransom on eBay, it's easy to get way too carried away with it. You don't need to spend $4,550 on that Collectors Series Millenium Falcon set.
Just like the Lego's, let's be very upfront about the fact that the existence of this thing is awesome. The whole Barbie "Sheroes" line is a cool idea, and the fact that the Selma filmmaker was picked and depicted so well is awesome. The reason this is on this list is that it sold out in an hour. Many, many of those purchases were made in earnest by her fans or parents looking to raise their kids with good role models. But anyone who ever waited in the cold for a Nintendo knows that some of them were also bought by people looking to flip them on eBay, knocking sincere purchasers out of line in the process. Don't reward that behavior. Odds are Mattel will take the sold-out run as a sign to make more.
The most popular tabletop game for kids this year looks like something Lily's dad would've cooked up on How I Met Your Mother. The game involves taking turns playing chicken against a mechanical arm filled with whipped cream. You could probably get the same effect with a blindfolded toddler. Again, nothing against the game itself, but it's going for $70 on eBay over its regular $15 price tag. Guarantee you they'll be back to normal by April.
Every year, Lexus runs an ad campaign where someone buys their significant other a Lexus with a big red bow on it, leading to tears of joy at the grand, romantic gesture. However,cars are a huge financial commitment, and you should really be talking things like that over with your partner instead of springing it on them—unless you're in a tax bracket where you can just casually buy a car, in which case you're probably getting financial advice from a hireling and not from a website.
We're living in a world where any random schmuck can buy a remote-controlled quadcopter (or octocopter, if you're nasty). Some of them even include on-board cameras that can record in 4K. Unless you're a marketing worker, a videographer, or a land surveyor, you probably don't actually have much use for these, so why drop four figures on something your drunken, conspiracy-theorist neighbor can shoot out of the sky with no repercussions.
That's right, we're going after one of the old stalwarts of gift-giving, and here's why—flavor co-mingling. You reach your hand in there and grab a big ol' wad of caramel popcorn and shove it into your mouth, only to have the whole experience shattered by a rogue piece of cheese popcorn. Figure out what your recipient's favorite flavor of popcorn is, and get them a huge tin of just that.
Unless you know that your recipient likes a specific scent, don't go there. At best you're saying "I don't like the way that you smell right now; please smell like this." At worst the person doesn't wear perfumes because of a horrible allergy. Not to mention that these things tend to either be really expensive or plastered with pictures of Tim McGraw without enough range in between. Leave this one alone unless you're certain.
Star Wars has always tapped into something primal and joyful about the power of myth. It's also been unabashedly monetized since Lucas first got merchandising rights as part of his original distribution deal with Fox. It seems a little odd that people are dropping $150 or more on this Bluetooth-controlled droid that doesn’t do much of anything besides sit there and look cute.
