The PopCulteer
November 20, 2020

It’s going to be a very short PopCulteer this week. After this post, there will only be six days left in The 2020 PopCult Gift Guide.

As with everything in 2020, the gift guide has been a little unusual. I’m ending it earlier than ever because nearly every gift suggestion I make is available online, and with the rocky recent behavior of The Post Office, I don’t want anybody missing the shipping deadines.

Nobody likes to find “Your gift is in the mail” under the tree.

I’m not doing my usual bit of urging you to shop local because it’s not really safe. I’m not doing it this year, and I wouldn’t suggest you do anything that I wouldn’t. In the grand scheme of things, ordering something from Amazon instead of fighting the crowds at Walmart is not exactly the kind of sacrifice that you’ll tear up about when you tell your grandchildren about this year.

I miss going to local stores, but my will to continue living outweighs that.

Also in this year’s gift guide, longtime readers may notice that I’ve recycled a lot of reviews of books, comics, toys and music from earlier in the year. This was actually part of the plan all along. In previous years I have run myself ragged cranking out this guide, and I didn’t want to do that to myself this year. So I planned ahead. I enjoy assembling the gift guide every year, but I don’t enjoy just barely outrunning my self-imposed deadlines. Except for two days, I’ve had this year’s guide prepared at least one full day in advance.  Recycling the year’s best reviews made that possible.

It’s worked out pretty well, so you can expect way more reviews in PopCult in 2021, along with a couple of other major changes that I’ll tell you about near the end of the year.

I’ve done pretty well with my plan to cap the price of my gift suggestions at a hundred bucks. I’ve also gone out of my way to suggest things that aren’t listed in every other gift guide. The reason I didn’t suggest the Animatronic Child from The Mandalorian, aside from the fact that the little bugger is on back-order almost everywhere, is that…well…it’s the hottest Star Wars toy in decades. Nobody who would be interested in it doesn’t already know all about it. I like to tell you about things you may not already know about.

We have six more days of cool ideas for your holiday shopping, and Friday is going to be a special day filled with ideas for Stocking Stuffers. Everything we recommend today is going to be cheap, small and fun. We may have as many as five entries today, and they’ll start dropping around 11 AM EST, so check back for that.

Our last gift guide post will go live the day before Thanksgiving, and the day after Trukey day will bring The 2020 PopCult Gift Guide Master List.

There will be some kind of post on Thanksgiving, but I guarantee you that there won’t be much effort put into it. Next week will have some new programs on The AIR, plus a holiday programming stunt, and then, if all goes according to plan, a week from Saturday PopCult‘s regular features will all return.

Thanks for coming to PopCult, and thanks for making The 2020 PopCult Gift Guide the most-read ever (and that’s with six days left to go!)