The Oscars Swag Bag Was $137,000 Worth of the Weirdest Gifts Known to Man

The Academy Award nominees’ gift bag is as much an Oscars institution as the red carpet or the “In Memoriam” segment, and for the past 20 years they’ve been dished out by the marketing agency Distinctive Assets. The 2022 bag’s value clocks in at about $137,000, which almost sounds affordable when when you consider that the combined total value of last year’s swag bags ($5.1 million) approached the worldwide box office earnings of Best Picture winner Nomadland.

Because Distinctive Assets isn’t technically affiliated with the Oscars, it gets to decide exactly who receives its pricy goodie bags. This year, 28 people—hosts Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall, and Amy Schumer, plus all the nominees in the Best Actress/Actor, Best Supporting Actress/Actor, and Best Director categories—received the coveted packages.

Those who went un-gifted should not be too put out, though, as many of this year’s goodies are deeply, deeply weird. This is not your standard gift bag full of flavorless cheese and stale crackers—this is a bag brimming over with cosmetic surgeries, pseudoscientific therapies, Lord and Lady titles and literal plots of Scottish land. This is a bag that seems poised to start a cult, or at least an international incident. So let’s dive in to some of the weirdest and priciest offerings, as per the Daily Mail’s rundown.

The 28 people who receive these gifts are celebrities, so you might think that the arms they already have are, by definition, celebrity arms. But nope! They won’t truly be celebrity limbs until plastic surgeon Dr. Tomas Su sucks $6,000 worth of fat out of each of them. Judging by his office’s instagram account, Oscar nominees don’t need to stop at their arms—they can turn to ArtLipo plastic surgery for all of their liposuction needs. The office even does cankles, which I believe is the medical term.

Unwilling merely to suggest that the nominees are fat, Distinctive Assets created a swag bag that also implies that they’re old and ugly. Included in the bag is $10,000 worth of “treatments and rejuvenation” from a surgeon who specializes in anti-aging and who offers enticing sounding procedures like “vampire facials.” Is there where your brain bleeds out of your ears? Because that is what’s happening to me right now.

This is a pretty solid, normal present. But one rule I believe in is that, when possible, you should avoid giving people gifts that are also work. And while most of us have a room in our living space we’d like to see redone, the actual process of researching, selecting, and planning the installation of a new interior is, unfortunately, work. It’s work that most of these rich people can pawn off to their army of assistants, but it’s work nonetheless. (Note to anyone thinking of giving me a multi-thousand reno gift card: I am not a stickler when it comes to my own gifting rules.)

According to Forbes, a full kitchen upgrade costs around $25,000, so the few people on the gift list who don’t already have the latest and greatest in interior design can finally get that kitchen island of their dreams. But the company donating this remodel is based in LA, so it’s unclear how people like Ryusuke Hamaguchi or Olivia Colman, who don’t appear to have California pads, would be able to cash in their cabinetry coupons.

According to its synopsis, The Wizard’s Wish is about a “kindly wizard” who teaches the members of a village how to make “yucky” feelings go away by practicing an Emotional Freedom Technique also known as “tapping,” which is apparently an acupressure-based therapy practice. The book is written by self-described “abundance coach” Brad Yates, who, shocker, is available for private sessions. If this all sounds rather woo-like, EFT actually appears to be on the more researched-based end of the gift bag’s therapeutic offerings.

“Visit Scotland”—always one of the major takeaways from Macbeth. Inspired by Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, nominees get to take over the entirety of a Scottish castle for a three-night stay. The trip comes with butler service and a bagpiper, which is exactly the instrument everyone wants to hear blasted at them during a restful holiday.