Novelty item
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A novelty item is an object which is specifically designed to serve no practical purpose, and is sold for its uniqueness, humor, or simply as something new (hence "novelty", or newness). The term also applies to practical items with fanciful or nonfunctional additions, such as novelty slippers. The term is normally applied to small objects, and is generally not used to describe larger items such as roadside attractions. Items may have an advertising or promotional purpose, or be a souvenir.
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List of novelty items
- Big Mouth Billy Bass
- Bobblehead
- Bubble pipe
- BunaB
- Chattery Teeth
- Cheesehead
- Chinese finger trap
- Crookes radiometer
- Deely bobber
- Drinking bird
- Expandable water toy
- Finger guillotine
- Garden gnome
- Groucho glasses
- Horse head mask
- Kit-Cat Klock
- Lava lamp
- Mexican jumping bean
- Newton's cradle
- Novelty lighter
- Pet Rock
- Plasma globe
- Plastic flamingo
- Plate lifter
- Propeller beanie
- Radio Hat, while a practical item, was a novelty when it first appeared
- Rubik's Cube, now an established toy after a brief period as a novelty item
- Snow globe
- Squirmle
- Talking clock
- Toffee hammer
- Trammel of Archimedes
- Umbrella Hat
- Useless machine
- Water capacitor
- X-Ray Specs
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Further reading
- Cheap Laffs: The Art of the Novelty Item, Mark Newgarden, Abrams Books/PictureBox, 2004
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See also
- Souvenir
- Notion
- Practical joke device
- Chindōgu, Japanese neologism for an "unuseless" invention
- Ephemera
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