Christmas is Coming and We Should Have Some Toys in the Attic

Photo by Tim Mossholder from Pexels

What does every guitar player want for Christmas? Another guitar, of course. The formula works for any instrument, year after year. But there are some more whimsical representations of what makes musicians tick, and retailers don’t need a lot of extra shelf space come December to make room for some clever – and sometimes revealing – tchotchkes that, like Hallmark cards, tell us something we’ve been wanting to hear.

They run the gamut from cute and quotidian, like the piano cufflinks that will come out, like the mistletoe, once a year, to the sturdily utilitarian, such as the amp-head key holder, to the alluringly strange, like the 20-pound bust of Lionel Richie made out of chocolate ($893 from Firebox).

Some MI manufacturers have figured this part of Christmas out. Amp maker Marshall, for instance, has licensed its brand on enough toys to fill up Barbie’s downtown loft space that she shares with a broke metalhead. Fender and Gibson have both been longtime purveyors and licensors of their IP for gift items. Or not – their iconic guitar shapes have not surprisingly led to plenty of unlicensed pins and battery-powered wall clocks over the decades.

Fortunately, we’ve moved beyond lapel pins: for instance, both the Strat and the Les Paul have seen a rise in artworks based on – or that at least strongly resemble – their product-patent drawings. At a time when the electric guitar remains an icon of contemporary music but its sales paradoxically remain challenged, having a sort of Grey’s Anatomy iteration of these guitars could make for a very meta Christmas. Fender has also broken some new ground in the gift department: gift cards for its Fender Play online lessons program. At $49.99 for six months and $89.99 for a year, they’re innovative stocking stuffers, and give the industry back a present in the form of potential new lifelong customers.

In fact, the musical-gift category has become a staple of MI retail. For instance, Reverb.com has over 600 listings of gifts. These are overwhelmingly of the keychain-and-t-shirt variety, but their sheer numbers underscore the value of the category.

Among the coffee mugs and t-shirts are a few actual gems. One is a vintage Kustom PA system, circa 1978, way before you could carry a Bose L1 onto the subway and cover an audience five times the size that those old columnar PA systems could reach. But the Kustom’s glittery plush covering is the Tolex of the disco era. In fact, older instruments and products from the lamented bygone era of the late 20th century that could barely get noticed in a flea market are transformed into kitschy artworks when properly wrapped at Christmas, just as LP covers have become more desirable in some cases than the vinyl they house. (Try putting a red ribbon bow on a $19 Chinese microphone and watch what happens. And certain musical “gift baskets” found online look very much like nicely packaged assortments of products that never made it on their own at retail.)

Some guitar stomp boxes have become so intricately designed that they’re as much works of graphic arts as they are sonic tools. They could easily be gifted to a graphically minded esthete who may not know which end to plug in but is happy to admire them for their inspired scrimshaw. Brian Wampler, of Wampler Pedals, which has created several Christmas-themed pedals in the past, told me that stomp boxes “have become something to show off, something that tells a story to the person looking at the pedal board.”

In short, anything can be a gift, if it’s given in the right spirit. The holiday sales season (aka Christmas) is a good time to experiment with products that convey both the uniqueness of your store and your customers. Music outlets, online and otherwise, have plenty of original ideas that creative recipients will appreciate. You just have to know where to look.