Awesome Gifts

This beautiful lighter from Zippo’s Japanese product line features a deeply-embossed titanium coating that looks like rippling waves. It comes in a black or blue finish with Zippo’s famously reliable lighter mechanism inside. They also make versions with swirl and abstract geometric patterns.

Musicians – especially guitarists and bass players – will love these desk organizers that look like miniature guitar amps. Etsy seller Lions Print makes these 3D-printed pencil caddies and dresses them up with logos from popular amplifier makers. They’re available with silver or gold caps and can be personalized, too.

This 2″ cast iron desktop object offers an elegant and practical place to store and strike matches. Its shape is reminiscent of a giant match head and has a deep knurled pattern on its outside, providing the friction needed to start strike anywhere matches. (Matches not included.)

Yoshiharu Hamono’s Penato Knife gets its name from its carbon steel blade’s pennant-like shape. It comes with a brass body and sheath, so you’ll be happy to leave it on your desk or shelf even when you’re not using it.

Everything tastes awesome thanks to these officials LEGO salt and pepper shakers. The set includes a pair of black and white bricks, upscaled to 600 times the size of the LEGO 1×1 stud bricks they’re based on. They even snap and stack together like the real deal.

This handmade Japanese chef’s knife from Yoshihiro is a work of art. Forged from 46 layers of steel, its razor-sharp straight blade is ideal for chopping vegetables and has an eye-catching hammer texture and damascus swirl pattern. A rosewood handle adds to its beauty, as does its custom-cut magnolia wood sheath.

Cavallini & Co. makes a variety of jigsaw puzzles based on their library of vintage illustrations. This 28″ x 22″, 1000-piece puzzle features a detailed image of a periodic chart of the elements that dates back to the 1950s. It’s a great gift for science geeks, and its tiny numbers and letters make it a challenge to complete. The design is also available as wrapping paper.

The 50 illustrated cards in The Mushroom Compendium (by London’s Kew Royal Botanic Gardens) reveal scientific, cultural, and fantastical details about individual species. Identify the botanical traits of ‘shrooms like ballerina wax caps, barbie pagodas, and stinkhorns. Sections cover micro/macro, saprobe, symbiotic, parasite, useful, weird, and rare.

Paul Szewc of Masterpiece Laser makes this beautiful wood game board for playing the classic game Othello aka Reversi. Carved from North American cherry, the board has storage trays and concave spaces for easy flipping. The set comes with 64 wooden game pieces in green or natural. Save 10% on Masterpiece Laser items with code AWESOMER.

Ever had a matcha or plum wine-flavored KitKat candy bar? Probably not, unless you ate ’em in Japan, which has 300+ unique flavors of the sweet treats. Bokksu’s cheery party box is filled with 70 Japanese KitKats in 14 of the top flavors, including rarities found only in specific regions.

Add some whimsy to your house plants with these goofy tentacles from CraftIRL. The set of eight 3D-printed tentacles turns your plants into an undersea wonderland as an imaginary octopus dances between the leaves. They vary in shape for visual interest and come in small and medium sizes in many colors. We love the glow-in-the-dark suckers.

James Beard Award-winning mixologist Toby Maloney and the bartenders of Chicago’s The Violet Hour created this 320-page guide to the fundamentals of cocktail making. You’ll learn about balancing ingredients, getting the right textures, aromas, and temperatures, then advance to making your own concoctions.

Designed by former martial artist and self-defense specialist James Williams, CRKT’s Williams Tactical Key is an innocuous self-defense tool. It looks just like a key but offers a pointed end and a secure grip when needed. It also works as a Philips screwdriver. Its made from steel with a glass-reinforced nylon handle.

Show ’em you know how to handle your meat with this impressive cleaver from Dalstrong. The Gladiator Series Meat Chopper has a razor-sharp 8-inch full-tang blade made from high-carbon 7CR17MOV steel and G10 handle scales. It weighs a hefty 2.3 pounds and includes a handsome acacia wood display stand. It’s also available in a 5-inch model.

You’ll forget all about heavy-as-a-brick candied fruitcake when you try culinary superstar Giada De Laurentiis’ Double Chocolate Panettone. Lucious enough to please any chocolate lover, it’s the star of her decadently delicious range of Italian foods available at her Giadzy.com site. Once you try it, it’ll become your new holiday tradition.

Mondo Books and authors Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali offer up a fantastic retrospective of 1970s kung fu movies. This encyclopedic 432-page book recounts the history of these martial arts classics, accompanied by hundreds of movie posters, ads, and archival images. A must-own for any serious martial arts buff.