USB Pole Dancer

This USB-powered stripper pole dancer performs to the beat of your own music. It comes complete with a memo from HR. Perfect for that guy in the office that sent you horse.mpg. Just don't waste this on the douche that sent you that two girls one cup link. (The same people make a USB-powered Family Guy Stewie action figure.)

Poo-lar Bear Pooper

This Poo-lar Bear Pooper, $6, dispenses lovely brown candy from it's rear end. I work with someone that has the moose version and it still gives him the giggles after 3 years.

Also comes in Oops-A-Daisy Pooper cow, Oh Deer Pooper reindeer, The Waddling Penguin Pooper, and Baa Humbug Pooper sheep.

Clueless Car Gift

Nothing says "I have no clue what to get you" like a gift for someone's car. But if you're gonna go the car gift route, these $15 tire-pressure-checking caps are a great way to go. It's exactly the sort of thing I'll get my uncle in a few years when he's allowed to drive again.

Knives

The $24 Victorinox Midnite Manager is perfect for a keychain. It starts with tiny screwdrivers, scissors, a nail file, a bottle opener and a knife blade and adds a pen and an LED flashlight. I carry one and it's done everything from slicing cardboard boxes to fixing a headlight on a Model T Ford.


A little bigger option is the $100 Spyderco Caly 3. It's a very well made utility knife and one of the most popular recent knives from Spyderco. It's big enough to cut almost everything that needs cutting but small enough to carry almost anywhere except an airplane.


Finally, the new $35 Leatherman Knifeless Fuse tool is loaded with everything except a knife blade, which makes it perfect for the frequent flying gadget lover.

Flashlights all around!

One year I gave every member of my wife's family a flashlight. Cheap $1 ones from the impulse buy end cap at Sears. It was pretty much an afterthought and they were so cheaply built that I had about 30% of them fail before I even gave them. Even years later I'm remembered for giving all those flashlights. They forgot the $20-30 gifts, but they remember the $1 flashlights.

Today's LED flashlights are amazing. No burned out bulbs, longer battery life, and often they're brighter than the older non-LED lights.

There are plenty of $10-20 cheapies available in almost any store you go into. At $20-40 and available everywhere, the new LED Mag Lites, whether the little AA version or the big 4D cell version, are great gifts.

But for a lot of flashlight geeks like me, a Fenix light with a Cree LED is the next step. For about $50 , you can get a tiny pocket light that can be as bright as a massive D cell Mag Lite. My personal favorite is the Fenix L1D which runs from a single AA battery. The Fenix L0D takes a single AAA battery and makes a great keychain light. The Fenix P1D runs from CR123A lithium battery which can get expensive, but it's the brightest and highest-end of the single-cell Fenix lights.

Battery Caddy

Personal Battery Caddy. These are so cool they glow. They're battery carriers meant for pilots to safely carry spare batteries for all their gadgets from radios to GPS units, but every geek I know needs one or more. They'll keep all your batteries together. They protect the terminals from shorting out, which is good if you carry rechargeable batteries that can put out enough current to melt metal. I love the glow-in-the-dark models. $5 to $15.