This one is probably out of date now with smart TVs and few people using cable, but one of those jumbo TV remotes for people with poor eyesight/motor difficulties.

I once received a 20kg salami. Quite the surprise and very memorable. It’s a fermented product, so stores well.

My dad was going grey, so my brother bought him ‘just for men’ hair dye, which he opened at the Christmas dinner table with the entire family. He was about 9. We still laugh about it.

Helped my dad wrap a box in about an inch of duct tape (which was then gift wrapped) for a cousin’s Christmas present. The box was full of packing peanuts and had a false bottom with a gift card underneath. At no point had we stopped to consider whether or not it could be opened again (it took a long time to get it open lol).

As a grandmom, my Mom has decided on boxes for really lame gifts that might make you wonder if she has dementia, for gift cards.

If you don’t give her sufficient ideas for her to buy you something you enjoy, you’re a Scrooge and deserve this box of instant jello …… containing a gift card so you can get it yourself

I proposed to my wife at Christmas by putting the ring in a bigger box so she was surprised. It was a box for skincare product, and she was actually excited for it before she even opened it to see the ring. Obviously she was happy for the proposal, but she also seemed a little disappointed she didn’t get skincare stuff.

The following Christmas, I got her a tiny container of a skincare product she liked and put it in a ring box.

Depending on the audience, there are cute little plush things, Giant Microbes, which have a line of sexual transmitted diseases. If you get one for an SO, they can say, “13esq gave me chlamydia for Christmas…”

Other good joke gifts can come from any inside joke that you may have with your SO, so these are very situational. At one point, I had joked that my SO was a sugar mama because she was paying for something expensive for us. I later got her a t-shirt for a candy called Sugar Mama.

On one date, we were the only ones dining at an outside patio at a nicer Italian restaurant. We had ordered wood fire pizzas. Anyway, a very large rat came to visit the patio, and we had joked about it at the time, even naming the rat. I later gave her an ornament of a felt rat holding a pizza slice (which is apparently a thing).

I can’t think of any others right now, but I love giving little joke gifts to people along with real ones.

Boxes within boxes with different recipients. You hand the gift to the first recipient, who unwraps a plain cardboard box, opens it, and finds a gift wrapped with a bow and a new recipient. The gift is handed to the next recipient who repeats the process, and the gift moves on. The final tiny box is a dollar store magnet. The first box was the size of a refrigerator. Everyone gets a present.

My sister once put some dog doo in a paper towel tube and wrapped it as a present.

But somehow I don’t think that the kind of prank you’re looking for.

20 lbs of foot long nails.

Could go with a box full of spring loaded snakes.

The very largest potato you can find.

One of those pillows that looks like an inflating phone battery.

Better idea: 3"*4" Magnetic viewing film, stored in a thoughtfuk card, which is wrapped in a box with 6"*6" thermochromatic film, which is itself is wrapped in a box with a roll of glow in the dark tape, and then given to them with another thoughtful card that holds a gift card to somewhere you think they would like. Basically a nesting set of tiny cool things that all cost about as much as the wrapping paper they are in.

I’ve given my SO leaves, rocks, and sticks like a bird making a nest. It makes her chuckle. We have a strange relationship.

I have an old set of joke boxes I bought from The Onion ages ago that are really fun to put an actual present in and give to someone. For example, the Visorganizer: a small organizer pouch that clips onto the visor of your hat!

Another year the only thing my wife wanted was a new set of Airpods Pro. Now, for me, a very important part of a present is the surprise, so when she found a fairly large box under the tree, she figured she had gotten something else. Until she opened the box and found another wrapped gift inside. And another inside that, and another, and another… And finally at the end a small gift bag with the Airpods in 😁

“SO”? Sorry, I have problems that almost any possible sentence have his own unique acronym in english.