I bought some paper airplanes from someone on Stroget in Copenhagen for my kids - they looked like fun. Never worked though and my kids thought they were stupid.<BR><BR>Hard Rock T-shirts and shot glasses rank up there with any stupid souvenir.

Re the dancing mickeys.<BR>If you look closely at the 'boom box' you will see that the front of the cassette drawer is missing. There is a thin piece of piano wire attached to the rotating cassette spindle. As it rotates, the wire shakes and shimmies.

I think its a tie between the stuffed Nessie doll from Scotland (complete with tam-o-shanter!) or the little wooden sheep doll from Ireland (made with real Irish wool!!!)

Two years ago, I bought a coffee mug in Montmartre on rue Steinkerque with a picture of Van Gogh's &quot;Starry Night&quot; on it. Stupid picture melted off the mug first time I washed in the dishwasher.<BR><BR>But I really liked it. : (

Mind the Gap thong underwear. You can imagine where mind the gap was written!

I thought of something else . . . a really stupid souvenir that we send home with people who visit us in China (or at least, those people that would find them funny).<BR><BR>I'd lived here in Shanghai for about 2 years and always thought that it was a bit odd that every other stall selling &quot;antiques&quot; and other tourist items always had a large bowl, half-filled with water, with small ceramic figurines of a naked little baby boy, (Why the water? Why was a plain figurine of a baby boy such a popular a tourist item?) but I never bothered to ask.<BR><BR>Well, my mom was even more curious, and just asked. The shopkeepers pulled one out of the water and set him on a table, then hurried to the back room, came back, and poured hot water on the figurine. A long stream of water came shooting at least 6 feet right out of the boy's . . . <BR><BR>(As lowbrow as the humor is, it can be a very effective dinner party joke if you build it up solemnly as a &quot;carving&quot; you've just brought back from China that you want to show everyone)

I may get into trouble posting this on the Europe site, but it is relating to stupid souvenirs - or more precisely stupid consumers of souvenirs.<BR><BR>On a trip to Agra in India we visited a craftman's shop (marble and silk carpets) and spent a great deal of money on purchasing black marble plates inlaid with semi precious stones - and a genuine hand made silk carpet. Backpacking at the time we were hardly capable of transporting our booty home so given that this craftsman had not only dined with us that evening but had copious letters and certificates from the government (probably, now it seems, fake) and letters from a certain famous cricket player (again probably fake)as references we felt that we could trust this man to post the things we had ordered (and paid for) to us.<BR><BR>Months went by after our return and finally we received our packages from India. You can imagine our dismay when we opened these to find that our black marble plates were actually white alabaster and our silk carpets (originally bought in traditional red tones) was in fact blue and practically worthless acrylic.<BR><BR>Letter after letter was sent to the craftsman (with, of course, no reply) and then letters to the Indian Government body relating to this type of thing (ie; tourist ripoffs) - who also did not reply and we just, unfortunately, had to put it down to a bad experience. The very worst thing was a very expensive marble table top that one of us had bought for his mother's 50th Birthday did not even turn up.<BR><BR>You live and learn I guess - now we take everything with us - and if it can't be carried we don't purchase.