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White elephant parties present a unique challenge: Can you find something either cool or funny enough within a set budget that a group of people—who are potentially strangers—will battle to take it home?
If you’re headed to your first white elephant gift exchange, here’s a quick explainer on what’s about to happen. Everyone will bring a wrapped gift (often under a certain price, like $25) and place them into a pile or central spot, and then each person will draw a number to see the order. When your number is called, you can either choose and unwrap a gift from the pile, or steal one that has already been unwrapped by someone. Most exchanges will have a limit of how often you can steal one gift—usually around three times—so if you have the best gift in your hands, there’s no guarantee you’ll get to keep it. If your gift is stolen, you can either unwrap a new one or steal a different gift (no take-backs, sorry).
The real thrill comes from finding something great in a pile of who-knows-what. Some folks bring joke gifts, some bring booze to be safe, and some gifts will feel like garbage to you but gems to others. Here are some gifts I recommend bringing, ranging from quirky to cool. There’s something in this guide too for every potential price cap.
Looking for more gift ideas? Don’t miss our other awesome gift guides, including Best Gifts for Under $30, Best Gifts for Cold People, Best Gifts for Moms, and Best Gifts for Outdoorsy People.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
A Punchable Key
Big Enter Supersized Key
I’ll tell you right now: The Big Enter Supersized Key enter key is a little too much fun to have on my desk, and a great thing to bring for a white elephant with your coworkers, fellow work-from-home folks, or friends who are allowed to really decorate their cubicle. The punchable enter key’s function is simple: You punch it to hit enter. It connects to a computer via a USB cord, and is nice and responsive so you don’t have to punch it super hard. It’s a fun addition to lively Slack chats, or a secret way to be passive-aggressive without anyone knowing. Unless the winner of this supersized key has a cubicle partner. But that’s their problem—if they can manage to win in the first place during the game.
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Photograph: Kat Merck
Cereal Anywhere, Anytime
CrunchCup
Someone, if not multiple people, loves cereal at your white elephant. And this gift is for them, especially if they’re always forgetting to make it in advance. The dishwasher-safe CrunchCup has a small tubular reservoir for cereal nested inside a lidded plastic tumbler that holds a little over a cup of milk. The idea is that the user drinks from the cup and the cereal and milk combine in their mouth, not in a bowl where the cereal will become soggy.
Tip from someone who might use this to sneak their child’s Lucky Charms while reading at night, which is definitely, most certainly not me because I’m a mature adult: Block half of the milk hole with your lower lip so cereal has time to come out, otherwise you’ll get a mouthful of milk and no cereal. It also works best with smaller-gauge cereal like Cheerios, not larger, heavier chunks or flakes like Raisin Bran. Not that I would know any of this from firsthand experience, of course, being a grown adult who eats grown adult things. —Kat Merck
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
Desktop Still Life
MoMA Pear Pod Desktop Organizer
When I first saw MoMA’s Pear Pod Desktop Organizer, I thought it was such a cute little desk accessory. It’s certainly cute, but little? This pear is almost comically large, and I wish I had one on my desk my entire life. It has a full pen holder inside that fits more pens than my desk has to offer, and four little shallow storage trays that fit things like paper clips, slim charging bases, hair ties, and the like. All of which you can instantly hide under the pear lid when you want it out of sight. I really can’t express enough how funny this large pear is to look at sitting on my desk. It’s certainly a conversation starter and an eye-catching accessory, plus it’s legitimately useful. It’s something I’d be thrilled to take home from a white elephant.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
Game-Night Candles
GMDice Gaming Candles
Being a nerd isn’t as lame as it used to be, nor does it seem so weird to play Dungeons & Dragons like it used to, either. If you’ve got a few dungeon divers in your white elephant group (or maybe it’s a white elephant with your D&D party!), these soy-wax candles from GMDice are a must. There are a ton of fun scent options, all themed around D&D spells, classes, and places you might go during an adventure. My favorite scents I’ve tried are Hunter’s Mark ($33, 20-ounce jar) which smells like a fresh forest; Dwarven Tavern ($16, 8-ounce tin), which smells like warm honey mead; and Chainmail Bikini ($7, 2-ounce tin), which smells like a tiki cocktail, and there’s a ton more worth exploring and shopping. The candles come in 2-ounce, 8-ounce, 16-ounce, and 20-ounce sizes, plus wax melts. Personally, I’d grab two of the 8-ounce options for a white elephant gift, depending on the price limit, or a handful of 2-ounce candles in a variety of fun-sounding scents.
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Photograph: Chronicle Books
A Great Group Game
Listography: The Game
Finding a good group game is hard, especially one that can accommodate both small and large groups. The best one I’ve tried is Listography, which is designed for three to six players but I’ve seen it successfully accommodate up to 10 people. To play, one person will pull a card with a prompt—things like “states that border Canada”—and everyone needs to make a list of answers. How many things you write down and how obscure you want to get varies, since there are three different card styles and requirements for that round. There’s a board your group will move around, so if you bring more than six players, you’ll need to bring your own extra tokens or miniatures to move around the board.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
Fresh Nails
Glamnetic Press-On Nails
If your white elephant group has a few nail fans, whether it’s friends who always have their nails done or ones who lament about wishing they had more time to get their nails done, this is the gift to catch their eye. Glamnetic is known for its magnetic eyelashes, but the company’s press-on nails come in a ton of fun designs (though there’s no magnetic trick here, just regular nail glue). Glamnetic’s Snow Place Like Home collection has a ton of seasonal options for your friends to fight over, or there’s always the classic French tip collection if you want to give something that works year-round. Don’t forget to include some press-on nail remover ($12), especially since it’s such a pretty bottle.
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Photograph: Amazon
Cute Kitchen Buddies
Ototo Kitchen Accessories
If you’re looking for something kitschy but useful, Ototo’s accessories are the way to go. They’re adorable to have in the kitchen while serving a purpose. The red crab, dubbed simply “Red” ($17), doubles as a spoon holder and a steam releaser, and it’s also a cute little friend to have hanging out around the kitchen counter waiting for his time to shine. I also love the little fridge, “Cool Guy” ($17), that you can fill with baking soda to absorb odors in your fridge. There’s a mushroom version too, named “Fun Guy” ($17). They’re adorable but tiny, so definitely plan to buy at least two, or buy one and pair a larger item with it, like the crab and a new kitchen spoon he can hold up.
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Photograph: Lego
Chic Legos
Lego Icons Dried Flower Centerpiece (Botanical Collection)
Legos are fun for all ages, and Lego has a ton of cool sets we’d all be proud to display around our homes. Architectural sets! Floral sets! Massive Star Wars sets! Most of these, of course, won’t fit into the white elephant budget. But one set gets pretty close: the Dried Flower Centerpiece Set. It’s usually around $40, which might not work for some lower-entry white elephants, but is a perfect choice for the $40 to $50 ones. It’s a fun set that someone can build alone or in a duo—I built mine with my husband for Valentine’s Day a couple years ago, and now it’s a permanent fixture on our bookshelves. It even survived a move!
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Photograph: Govee
Sweet LEDs
Govee RGBIC Pro LED Light Strips
Look, I’m probably biased in thinking everyone’s home could be improved by smart lights. I test smart bulbs all the time, and love adding panels like the LIFX Beam (8/10, WIRED Recommends) to spots in my home. But one of my favorite ways to add a ton of ambiance is with the help of an LED light strip. WIRED reviewer Simon Hill has tested a ton of light strips, and the Govee RGBIC is his favorite budget strip that should be within the range of most white elephants. Even with such a budget price, this light strip can still display a variety of colors, let you choose or create your own effects, and is easy to install.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
Tasty-Looking Magnets
Hey Foly Sushi Fridge Magnets
Jazz up someone’s fridge with adorable sushi magnets. They almost look a little too real—the salmon nigiri looks ready to eat—but are still fun to look at on a fridge. While the magnets on the plastic rolls are small, they’re still plenty strong enough to hold up papers and children’s artwork on someone’s fridge without slipping or falling. I’m craving ikura just looking at them, and the foodies at your white elephant can battle it out for who gets to take these home and deal with the same cravings.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
For New Year Preppers
The Happy Planner
The thing about white elephants and other holiday parties is that it means the new year is right around the corner. Twenty twenty-five? Already? Give the gift of being prepared with a fun planner a lucky person can start using come January 1. There are a lot of fantastic paper planners out there, but our favorite ones are from Happy Planner, since there’s both a ton of options and the planners are well-priced. Most of Happy Planner’s 2025 planners are around $35, but there’s a few in the $20 range if you have a lower price limit.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
A Desktop Landline
Gigicloud Retro Phone
My favorite white elephant win is one of these. The one I won was also shaped like a banana, but I’ve found you all something similar that works better than the banana phone did: a bright yellow phone that looks like it’s ready to sit on the rotary dial. It really captures the feeling and sound of using those landline phones, too, with the tinny audio through both the speaker and microphone. It’s still plenty easy to understand everything, and it adds a little touch of fun to answering quick voice calls on a computer or if you’re sick of your usual headset. (I clearly am.) It’s got a 3.5-mm audio jack, but maybe throw in an adapter if you think your crowd would use it with an iPhone rather than a computer or Android.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
A Joke Box
Prank-O Gift Boxes
Planning to wrap your white elephant in gift wrap? WIRED reviews editor Kat Merck recommends stepping up your game and putting your gift of choice in a Prank-O-Box to really confuse and amuse your fellow white elephant attendees. They’re also a hit with kids, as her son loves wrapping his friends’ birthday gifts in these boxes. From the cat hat ($9) to the squirrel hot tub ($9) to the 12,000-piece puzzle box ($10), there’s a Prank-O-Box for everyone.