Holiday Gift Guide
Here's to a fun-filled, highly intelligent holiday season for you and yours!
American Mensa’s elves spent this off season tirelessly looking for those oh-so-smart gifts that we’re sure will appeal to kids of all ages. If you’re searching for that special gift your favorite Mensa member will love, avoid the exhausting “shop ‘til you drop” attitude by wandering only as far as your favorite hotspot and browsing American Mensa’s Holiday Gift Guide.
Speaking of efficiency, this season's Holiday Gift Guide is once again brought to you by the helpful folks at GEICO, who know a thing or two about saving time and money on your homeowner, vehicle and rental insurance — and who offer special discounts to American Mensa members. We invite you to invest 15 minutes in learning what GEICO can do for you. It's the smart thing to do!
To assist you in getting these gifts for the smarties in your life, we've linked them through our Amazon storefront Smart Buys and to other storefronts and vendors directly.So what sort of gift are you looking for?
| Work smart | Play smart | Eat, drink and be geeky | For the smarty pants in all of us |
| Embrace your inner geek... outdoors | APPly your intelligence | Vive le chocolat | Give the gift of Mensa |
Work smart…
They say, "As a platform for free expression, you can arrange words, sketches and thoughts like building blocks and construct a world of your own..." We like the Moleskine LEGO Pocket Ruled Notebook and say, anything that encourages adults to play with LEGO®s is cool with us!
Yup, the uni-ball KuruToga Mechanical Pencil is a mechanical pencil — but it's also the next step in the evolution of this basic product. A twist-and-turn mechanism rotates the lead as you write to keep the lead sharp. Truly a must-have item for self-respecting, pocket-protector-wearing geeks everywhere.
The MIMOBOT Einstein flash drive might not make you work more efficiently, but it’ll definitely smarten up your file storage and transportation! The drive comes preloaded with bonus Mimory™ and the MimoDesk™ personalization suite of Einstein-themed wallpapers, icons, and avatars. The added plus is that you can tell your friends that Einstein helped with your last presentation!
Star Trek called, and they want their instrument panel back! Lasers in the Brookstone's virtual keyboard project a virtual keyboard from the small keychain to any flat surface, and advanced optics track your fingers like magic. Easily pair it with your smartphone; so small you can take it anywhere.
Nope, not gonna waste your time explaining this one. Every desk in your office should have one. If you get it, you want it; if you don't, well...
Play smart
So is everyone's traditional puzzle favorite, the Rubik's The Void Puzzle, half-empty or half-full of new challenges? You decide, of course, but those who tried it at the American Mensa Annual Gathering this year came down solidly on the "half-full" side.
Now here's a way to make learning fun — with the Elements Puzzle: This picture-loaded puzzle lets you "piece together" the names of the elements with what they look like or whom they're named after.
What is it that we love about fidget gadgets? The Perplexus 3D maze puzzle more than qualifies, engaging the fingers and minds of puzzle-lovers of all ages.
Q-BA-MAZE 2.0, a new twist on the basic marble-run creation, lets you snap together the pieces into any sculpture you can dream up. You can create marble maze sculptures in the form of animals, geometric shapes or any other design, which leads to unpredictable marble action.
SparkFun Inventor's Kit for Arduino houses everything needed to get the very beginner started in programmable electronics. It includes all the bits needed to build 14 basic circuits with no soldering required!
Eat, drink and be geeky
"Turn your kitchen into a food laboratory with Cuisine R-EVOLUTION's Molecular Gastronomy Kit that teaches you how to transform liquids into jelly-like cubes, spherify chopped produce into flavor-packed beads, or even morph melted chocolate into a delicate powder or spaghetti-like strands. You're only limited by your imagination! So go ahead, play with your food!" Couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Sriracha Popcorn is the perfect snack to much on while catching up on your sci-fi movie list: popcorn cooked with a special blend of garlic, vinegar and peppers. The effect is a slow burn or a fiery explosion, depending on how you choose to eat it.
All together now: Awwwww…! Help the little sweeties in your life catch the cupcake craze with the MasterChef Cupcake & Muffin Kit, including recipes and a 28-piece kit with the essential tools to take their cupcakes to new culinary heights.
Help your sweet tooth get healthy! The Frozen Fruit Soft Serve Processor combines frozen bananas and any additional fruit or chocolate into a treat with the texture of frozen 
yogurt or soft-serve ice cream, but without the additional fat, sugar or preservatives.
Keep your hands safe from hot pans, trays and the occasional hammer-throwing turtle with these Pixel Oven Mitts! Someone you love can look like a videogame character while serving dinner! Trust us — it'll help distract the kids from the roasted cauliflower.
For the smarty pants in all of us
The perfect timepiece for the math geek in your life! The Cadence radian watch features combined radian unit measurements, a 12-hour dial and a subtle Archimedean spiral. (And who can't appreciate a subtle Archimedean spiral?)
You want your favorite sci-fi- maven to be well-rounded, don't you? "101 Sci-Fi Movies You Must See Before You Die" is their must-have coffee-table book! And it goes great with Sriracha Popcorn!
If you've got a steampunk aficionado on your list, the Steampunk toggle switch plate is a practical item they'd love to have! Constructed of wood and brass (of course) with laser engraving; it installs over the existing switch plate.
You knew there was going to be a punny T-shirt in here somewhere. Thanks to our buddies over at mental_floss, we can now suitably recognize the release of the movie version of "The Hobbit" this holiday season by recognizing that Hobbits ARE Tolkien minorities!
Embrace your inner geek… outdoors
How do you know your workout is working, or what your baseline activity level is? Wear Nike's FuelBand and all your questions about your daily activity are answered. Of course it syncs to your devices.
The National Geographic® Expedition Shoe Lights are exploratory beauties that are lightweight, clip on easily to most shoes and sneakers, made of durable materials and feature two light-up modes. Where were these when we were going snipe hunting??
One of Tom Bihn's most recent offerings, the Camera I-O bag holds your DSLR body, several lenses, an external flash and accessories; it fits other Tom Bihn bags or can also be used as a stand-alone photo bag. A must-have on every photobug’s wish list.
Seems like everything has gone very high-tech this year. Don't let your holiday family football games be any exception! And don't stop playing just because the sun goes down. The Firevision Sports Football by NERF® has unique Microprism Technology giving you hours of playtime with blazing energy and a bright glow with no charging.
APPly your intelligence
If your family general hasn't yet perfected the art of martialling the troops, he or she needs Cozi Gold. The highly recommended family organizer is Web-based and fully mobile; subscribing to Gold increases your reminder options, eliminates site ads, moves to you the front of the customer-service line, and more.
With the tagline of "Remember Everything," Evernote quickly became our must-have app for all computing devices. Their premium upgrade offers group access, PDF search, unlimited note history, offline notebooks, PIN lock and more.
Mindmapping enables you to visually organize your thoughts, ideas and information. Use iThoughts and import and export to and from many of the most popular desktop applications. (iPhone and iPad only)
Every music geek we know can not stop raving about Spotify, and now we understand why. Sync all your favorite playlists to your phone and listen offline, or go online and stream music anywhere from Spotify's massive library. An audiophile's delight.
Vive le chocolat
Our annual gift guide wouldn’t be complete without a word or two about chocolate.
With the 13 Moon Club Haut-Chocolat, you can eat chocolate under the light of the full moon! A unique chocolate collection arrives every month (two in December!) with an enclosure card that details the significance of each lunar cycle and chocolate ritual.
The Flying Chocolate Pig is filled with hickory smoked uncured bacon, Alderwood smoked salt and deep milk chocolate…yet another way to get your daily dose of bacon. Bacon? Milk chocolate? When pigs fly… this holiday season!
Give the gift of Mensa
Sure, the American Mensa Academy™ game can help you improve your logic, math, language and visual agility — but when it comes to improving your overall intellectual agility, sharing your sense of humor, and just plain satisfying your curiosity on all kinds of topics, Mensa is the place to be.*
Test your mental mettle with hundreds of tough but fun-to-solve puzzles and brainteasers. Challenge yourself with word ladders, ingenious anagram puzzles, equations, logic sequences, math riddles, unexpected twists on crosswords and word searches, and more! 365 Mensa Brain Puzzlers 2013 Desk Calendar.*
Our certified, volunteer Proctors schedule supervised testing sessions throughout the year! For just $40, two tests are administered, and to facilitate the testing process, you can pre-pay for a testing session or give it as a gift! Tell those you love that you know they’ll qualify by giving them testing vouchers!*
If you’re not quite ready to take the Mensa Admission Test, we suggest the Mensa Home Test to whet your appetite. It’s is a fun way to discover if you’re Mensa material. While it won’t qualify you for membership, it does offer a strong indication of your likelihood for success.*
We sincerely thank GEICO for sponsoring the 2012 Holiday Gift Guide.
* Are you a Mensan? These vendors offer discounts or other special benefits to American Mensa members! Visit our Benefits & Services page for more information, or look into joining now.
