Growing up in the 90s, Sitcoms¹ were a cultural juggernaut. An absolute staple of the genre was the annual Christmas episode, where someone would receive a cataclysmically shit gift, quite often along the lines of “A donation has been made in your name….”².

Well, tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1999. If you’ve got a mate who’s always telling you they love reading our articles, except not quite enough to pitch in around USD $2 per month, then here’s your chance to deliver a true Christmas miracle:

Plastic Craic Gift Subscriptions: The Gift That Keeps on Giving the Whole Year

All Tiers come with Discord access, and we have had a few people tell us that it’s the only Discord they don’t have on mute, which we really took as a huge compliment. We’ve kept it to writers and Patrons by design (No Dickheads Policy), and the writing team is pretty active in there any time you wanted to tag us or talk about a list idea.

We talk a fair amount of shit in there too, but there’s also a few other advantages to being a member:

• The Plastic Craic Global Campaign, kicking off in early 2025. I’ll be GM’ing a map campaign where you submit results (similar to the GW summer campaigns) and earn points for your team in a few other ways too. We’ll keep all the “extra” stuff to conquering the map between rounds, so all players can use the Matched Play GHB games they’d be playing anyway as campaign games.
• We run a book club, where members vote on Black Libary books, comic runs or general fiction that we’ll read over the course of a month and then discuss afterwards.
• We run regular painting competitions for Patrons, like the recent Spearhead Hobby Challenge.
• We consult our Patrons for input on content, like the Greatest Warhammer Fantasy Art contest we’re running right now. All of those contenders were nominated by Patrons.
• We do also publish additional Patreon articles, like this recent piece on Luck vs Skill in wargaming.

The biggest things are still supporting the site and access to the Discord, but come on now, that’s got to be worth a few bucks of anyone’s money.

Shit Christmas Gifts: A Connoisseur’s Guide

Anyway. What was the peak for this trope? For me it’s National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, which is still shifting merch today:

The Gift That Keeps Giving Christmas Vacation T-Shirt

There’s also the famous Human Fund plotline from Seinfeld:

https://festivusweb.com/festivus-the-human-fund.php

And connoisseurs of the genre can pore over this Reddit thread that really caught fire a couple of years ago:

Comment
byu/Swirlystarrs from discussion
inAskReddit

Just think: not only will your friend get their name in lights at the end of every article, you might end up in that Reddit thread one day.

So go on. Be a pal, and click that link 👇

patreon.com/PlasticCraic/gift

If you’d like to help us continue our work, we’d love to have your support. All Patreon Tiers include Discord access, exclusive articles and regular contests. Our Tiers are priced to be within everyone’s reach, so please click here to join us today!

1. Ask your dad, he remembers them. Things like Friends, Frasier, they were pretty big around the same time that newspapers had clout. ↩︎
2. Shoutout to the classic TV trope that it’s usually men who buy crap and thoughtless gifts by the way. I can’t be the only person who has to physically put a parcel in my wife’s hands and ask her to wrap it for me? ↩︎