This Season's 16 Most Bizarre Pop Culture Christmas Ornaments

Traditional Christmas ornaments are kind of bland, aren’t they? Armies of Santa Clauses, snowmen, reindeer, doves and baby Jesuses generically capture the spirit of the holiday, but everyone’s got them. What you need is a way to turn your Christmas tree into a giant, glowing beacon of all the more modern things you enjoy. There are plenty of ornaments that let you proclaim your love of pop culture to visiting in-laws, with standard depictions of characters like Spock and Snoopy. But that’s only the Titanic debris-covered tip of the iceberg. If you dig around online and even into the darkest corners of the Hallmark store, you’ll find some ornaments that pay very odd and specific tribute to various cultural icons. And some are just plain WTF?! Here are the 16 most bizarre pop culture Christmas ornaments we found on Etsy and eBay that you can find for sale this yuletide season.

16. Dark Knight Rises Batman and Bane:

Some eBay sellers seem to have made a cottage industry of ramming metal rods through the heads of cheap action figures and calling them Christmas ornaments. That explains why you can find ornaments of obscure Star Trek characters Miles O’Brien and Commander Riker’s transporter clone brother, Tom, repurposed from their fairly worthless Playmates action figures. You can also purchase these Batman and Bane figures, unfortunately, depicting a fool’s-gold-plated Batman and a slowly starving Bane. These dollar store action figures already failed miserably as toys, so why not give them a place of honor year-after-year in your holiday décor?

15. Darth Vader Peekbuster:

Darth Vader wears a Santa cap and red cape and gloves as he wields his lightsaber and sternly warns you not to peek at your Christmas presents! If a Force choke had always been the punishment for this offense, who knows how many of your Christmases would have gone unspoiled? Like the one year you sneaked a look at the present from your crazy aunt – which you thought contained LEGO but actually turned out to be the dessicated remains of a Thanksgiving turkey she mistakenly wrapped five years prior.

14. Merry Kiss-mas with Pepé Le Pew:

What’s more disturbing about this (aside from the pun)? The fact that the lecherous skunk Pepé Le Pew is luring you in for a kiss under the mistletoe, or that the mistletoe is attached to the tip of his pointed tail, which is EXACTLY HOW SKUNKS SPRAY THEIR VICTIMS?! (Pointing the tail when spraying, that is, not the hanging of mistletoe.)

13. Winkie Guard from The Wizard of Oz:

I’m not even sure who this guy is but I don’t want him to guard or otherwise go anywhere near my winkie!

12. Pillsbury Doughboy:

Would you want this crazy-eyed, maniacally giggling plop of living cookie dough corporate mascot to be in charge of making your Christmas cookies? Is that a blood filling?!

11. Wreath of Khan:

It’s a simple ornament any of us could have made during grade school holiday arts-and-crafts time, but the pun is so audacious that it belongs on any Trekkie’s tree.

10. Ralphie Sees the Light:

Ah, yes, the classic moment in one of the most classic holiday movies in which a boy becomes a man by groping the leg of a can-can girl in the form of a lamp. Ralphie’s leering expression as he experiences his first hormonal explosion due to his encounter with the Old Man’s great prize in A Christmas Story is now ready to come home with you and arouse Christmas discomfort.

Continue reading “This Season's 16 Most Bizarre Pop Culture Christmas Ornaments” >