Magazine gift kits a subscription for disaster
By Beth Teitell
Boston Herald Columnist
Thursday, November 30, 2006
I was in Barnes & Noble yesterday, scouting for last-minute gifts (so I know what to panic-purchase on my way to a loved one’s house in a few weeks; heaven forbid I’d buy anything now, when there are no lines), when I spotted a procrastinator’s nightmare. This item is possibly the worst thing for the tardy giver since the gift card made cash look extra thoughtless: the magazine ‘‘subscription kit.”
The kits - for Vanity Fair, Vogue, Time and Oprah, among others - come with gift wrap, a gift card and a free issue of the magazine in question, and miraculously turn what might look like a lame present into something that apparently required forethought. And they’re not even a rip-off; the price for most of the kits is in line with the regular subscription cost.
And as if the kits aren’t bad enough, there’s also a $19.99 ‘‘giftscriptions” box, a festive-looking affair with a catalog of magazines that lets the giftee make her own choice.
So what’s the problem? Aren’t these welcome additions to the family of generic gifts, an interesting alternative to designer soap or overpriced chocolate? Far from it. For years - forever, really - the ‘‘I’m getting you a magazine subscription” line has been the last refuge of the forgetful, and this kills it for us.
Perhaps you know the drill: You’re about to head out to a holiday gathering when you realize you don’t have a present. Frantically scanning your home, you search for something - anything - that can pass: a bottle of wine from Trader Joe’s? (Nah, everyone knows it’s only $6.99.) Nora Ephron’s ‘‘I Feel Bad About My Neck”? (Perhaps, but how to explain the chocolate fingerprints on some of the pages?) You could wrap that hated frog figurine (except for that nagging feeling that your host gave it to you a few years ago).
Dejected, you sit on your couch, rest your feet on a pile of magazines and consider calling the hostess to explain your sudden-onset flu, when it hits you: a magazine. Rejuvenated, you head over to the party, empty-handed but full-voiced: ‘‘I’m getting you a year of The New Yorker,” you proclaim generously. Aren’t you wonderful?
Except now, the subscription will be worth nothing in terms of bragging rights. If it ain’t in a kit, it ain’t a gift. If only they sold ‘‘gift kit” gift kits, which would provide people like me with a prestamped card certifying that FILL IN GIFT HERE was bought months ago, especially for FILL IN NAME.
Oh, you shouldn’t have (don’t worry, I didn’t).
