Great ideas for Christmas for the man in your life (boysstuff.co.uk)

Member Name: gillyman

Product:	boysstuff.co.uk
Date:	11/11/03 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of good stuff, makes Christmas shopping easy

Disadvantages: -

*****Introduction part 1*****

Men are older versions of boys. Although we may pretend to be serious and mature, we are at our very happiest kicking a ball around, talking rubbish with our mates and causing uproariously laughter by public display of bodily functions.

Perhaps the most celebrated way in which men go back to their boyhood however is through our love of toys and gadgets - the father who buys his child a train set only to end up playing with it himself is perhaps the best loved example of this but in my experience if you give a man a kids' toy of some description he will enjoy messing around with it.

+++++Introduction part 2+++++

I hate shopping for presents. Christmas, Birthday, Wedding - whatever - can't stand it. I'm useless - tell me what you want and I'll quite happily buy it - but when it comes to guess work I will wander round for ages, end up buying the first thing that I saw and then watch as the question "what on earth possessed you" goes through the recipients mind whilst they say "oh.....how thoughtful" upon unwrapping said (unwanted) gift.

Furthermore - the fact that I'm based overseas whilst my nearest and dearest are in the UK, means that I have to resort to non-traditional methods of present delivery - its generally not Santa who does the delivering at Christmas, but Father Amazon and his BlackStar Elves.

*****The Solution to all my gift buying dilemnas*****

I don't remember how I discovered Boysstuff but am extremely glad that I did. The site offers a myriad of gift opportunities - mostly aimed at the man in your life (or in someone elses life if you're being sneaky), but with a lot of stuff that is mostly aimed at the child in all of us.

Upon going to the site, you are confronted with a front page with a whole gamut of popular gifts, easy registration procedures and menus splitting the gifts up - a very clever idea.
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I went to the site with the intention of buying a present for my brother's 28th birthday. He is the man who has everything - a beautiful wife, snazzy convertible and a good chunk of cash in the bank. A gadget of some description is the perfect present for him as I know that he likes toys. I had a rough idea of how much I wanted to spend so I clicked on the appropriate submenu - these split the gifts up into cost related bands starting at under a tenner and going up to "lucky git" (over £200). I went for something inbetween (but not too much - don't want to spoil him!)

An alternative option is to go for a submenu by subject. For example you could choose the subheadings Car Stuff, Drinking Stuff, Desktop gadgets etc - all very sensibly laid out.

You can then leaf through the various options in each section - with short descriptions and pictures of 10 objects per page which you can then get more detail on simply by clicking them - all very easy to do. When looking at an item it will give you further ideas by a feature which tells you what else people who bought that item bought.

The purchase procedure is fairly straightforward - similar to any other such site - filling in forms, credit card details etc.

I chose a mini scalextric for my bro. It arrived 3 days later with minimum fuss and he was overjoyed with it - all for under 20 notes.

The site is run with a lot of humour and it is very obvious that all of the items for sale have been tested by the staff - tested in the sense that they have wasted an afternoon messing about with the objects. The reviews of each items are written with the laddish humour which you'd expect to find between the pages of FHM or Loaded magazines and it is clear that they have lots of fun round the office - the sort of place that you'd like to work in short.

This very hands on approach means that there is lots of good stuff on offer to suit all pockets and t
here doesn't appear to be any rubbish so the chances are that you'll find something which will be appreciated.

At the same time however, efficiency is not effected. I received an email immediately my order was sent out confirming price and delivery details and informing me that if there was any problem they would have a member of staff shot! As I mentioned before - the item arrived in 3 days, in perfect working order (and this was directly after the postage strike when there was presumably a considerable back log).

+++++Conclusion+++++

An excellent site for your online shopping needs - simple to navigate your way around and full of stuff which will be appreciated by the big kid in your life. Very efficient and polite and with lots of humour. This is clearly a labour of love turned into a business.

Pop along - you'll see what I mean - then tell your friends!

All the best

Gilly

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