The More You Know

Inside the $48,000 Oscar Gift Bag

Don’t worry, Helen Hunt; when you lose the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to the desperate sorority girl that is Anne Hathaway, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be there to comfort you. In fact, they already know exactly what you’ll need — a $4 bottle of Windex touch-up cleaner. Nothing gets a person out of the doldrums quite a blueish-green surfactant. Move that spray nozzle from “stream” to “mist” and feel your failure lift from your shoulders like soap scum from tile!

If a bottle of Windex isn’t enough to do the job, the Academy Awards are offering a whole smörgåsbord of swag that losers can claim — hopefully the the sounds of tearing shrink-wrap and dismantled styrofoam will drown out the dying screams of your ego!

For the past eleven years, PR firm Distinctive Assets has been putting together the “Everyone Wins at the Oscars Nominee Gift Bag.” This year’s bag is estimated to be worth between $45,000 and $48,000. Unsurprisingly, the goodies include some considerably lavish items: a $12,000 trip to one of two Australian resorts, a $4,100 stay at a fitness retreat, a $5,000 Vampire Facelift, a cosmetic procedure which re-injects gel-like substances from a patient’s blood back into their face, and hundreds of dollars worth of acupuncture, VIP services, and nutrition.

Yet, after moving past the complimentary physical training sessions and facials, the content list begins to look less like a luxe swag bag and more like the shelf of your local bodega after it was looted in a blackout. Along with a three night $3,000 stay at the St. Regis Punta Mita, the Everyone Wins at the Oscars bag includes the aforementioned bottle of Windex, a $20 lint roller called The Ultimate Fuzz Remover, a set of combination bracelet hair-ties, a laundry bag, electronic cigarettes, and A SIX PACK OF NAKED BRAND CONDOMS. You are going to give Robert de Niro and nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis a pack of condoms, Distinctive Assets? That is audacious…and we love it!

You know what we also love? How it’s clear that at a certain point during the gift bag’s assembly, you guys decided you just didn’t care and you started getting really freaky with the whole thing. $400 tickets to see North America’s “only all-kid circus troupe?” A water filtration system? $120 worth of “luxury” maple syrup by Rouge Maple Gourmet Products? Those are the kind of gifts that only a lunatic or a pothead could love. The pièce de résistance is the inclusion of talk show host Leeza Gibbon’s memoir, Take 2: Your Guide to Happy Endings and New Beginnings. If that’s not rubbing salt into some Oscar-nominated wounds, I don’t know what is.

 

TAGS: Oscars | Oscars gift bags

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