I recently had a playful debate with my girlfriend that men were easier to buy for than women. She being a woman hotly contested this claim by I stand by it. If you’re a woman you see you probably like jewellery and clothes, unfortunately both these are things that a guy can easily get wrong and if they do the woman will be forced to wear the bloody things over and over again for the rest of her life…
Male gift ideas however are far easier to come by, more varied and easier to select and just a little bit of insight into the male psyche can show you why. Firstly, most guys (we being the slightly geekier species), have either one or two overriding interests. For me it’s superheroes and fitness, for one of my friends it’s football or golf, for my step dad it’s motorbikes. I could go on. The point is then that almost any merchandise related to this theme will be well received. For example I love the Superman belt buckle I got recently and the Superman mug I got recently. Any new training gizmo or bodybuilding book also goes down a storm. For my best mate I recently bought a golf cover (in the shape of a Gofer, get it?) and for my step dad a canvas of his motor bike the Kawasaki ninja.
Guys are also a slave to the media which should also provide you with a slew of male gift ideas. Most of us have a few television shows we follow or a couple of favourite films so again related merchandise will do well as a gift or DVDs of the show or film themselves.
Think of the male penguins and the big piles of rocks they use to impress women and other males (in case you didn’t know, penguins do that). We men are the same. We like to broadcast our every interest and taste to the world as well as our wealth and style. A woman can really help, particularly on that last point so anything that makes us look stylish or cool will go down well – desk toys, canvases, cool ornaments, gimmicky furniture, brief cases, sunglasses… a woman should know better than anyone what looks good on or with a man.
For this reason almost all guys like gadgets and gizmos. These don’t have to be the big things like phones or computers (which we’d probably rather pick ourselves to retain our male pride), but good male gift ideas can be those gadgets that are cheap and cheerful – universal remotes, a watch with a Dictaphone, or a pen/data pad.
We men also like to collect things. Again it’s probably evolutionary but once we have two of anything we’re pretty much compelled to get the whole set. Hence the fact that a good proportion of men either have all the Bond films or are working towards completing the set. Find your man’s collectibles, be they DVDs, snail shells or stamps and then try to fill in the blanks. If you need to search them out then it will demonstrate extra time and effort on your part.