Santa's Nano Helpers
Nano iPods are just the beginning. This holiday season, gifts are growing smaller and smaller. A spokesperson for Hershey's (which just shrank its popular kisses into thumbtack-size candy-coated "Kissables") explains the trend brilliantly: There's the "portability" factor. And the "cute" factor. So have a merry little Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. And we do mean little!
LUCKY CARDS
More classy than cash and less hassle than scouring the mall, gift cards can be a perfect fit. And now these pint-size presents can snag experiences as well as merchandise. Popular in the U.K. for years, the concept is just starting to take off in the States--on helicopters, hot-air balloons, and MiG jets.
From wine tasting in Philly ($40) to securing a musician to help you write your very own song in California or New York ($1,500), Xperience Days (xperiencedays.com) has something for nearly every price point--up to a zero-gravity flight in Florida for 27 people ($110,000).
Try belly dancing in San Diego ($20) or a one-hour closet makeover ($105) in Washington, D.C., via Signature Days (signaturedays.com). Go off with three pals for a five-day golfing trip at St. Andrews ($22,500). Or get down to Oaxaca, Mexico, for the "Yoga & Chocolate Retreat" ($5,500).
The three-day "Covert Ops & Special Forces training" in Florida ($2,950), from Great American Days (greatamericandays.com) , includes lessons for shooting Uzis and rescuing hostages. Or you can make a fool out of yourself (and a large mammal) at the Clown-Bullfighting School ($250) in Tennessee.
Gift experiences from Excitations (excitations.com) are confined to the Washington, D.C., area, but the company has plans to expand. Until then, it might be worth coming to the capital for "Extreme Stock Car Driving" ($325)--you ride shotgun for 15 laps with a NASCAR driver. - Vicky Hallett
GRAPE AND SMALL
Minibottles are on the rise. Credit (or blame) female drinkers who don't see the point in uncorking a whole bottle of vino when all they crave is a glass. The wee wines are usually sold in four-packs, priced at about $9; the champagne is about $5 a bottle.
Although the 187-mL size has been around a while, usually the options aren't as classy as Lindemans Minis , a popular Australian label. Varietals include chardonnay, merlot, and shiraz from the Lindemans Bin Series.
It doesn't get any more adorable than The Littlest Penguin --a tiny bottle of pink wine with a waddling bird on the label. Little Penguin's latest venture is small-size boites of chardonnay, merlot, shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, and its new white shiraz, a fruity, blush-hued delight.
Single-serve champagne bottles are a blessing for women. Instead of smudging lipstick on a flute, they can suck bubbly through a straw. Martini & Rossi Asti single 's gorgeous blue bottle helps it look more fashionable.
If your giftees spend weekends flipping burgers in a stadium parking lot, unbreakable bottles of chardonnay, pinot grigot, cabernet, and merlot from Stone Cellars by Beringer will save them from the tyranny of beer. - Vicky Hallett
POWER PINCH
From sweet to tangy, peppery to savory, spice company gift packs offer big-flavor mixes in small-size tins or jars.
For those who believe it's worth getting cold only if you can warm up with homemade hot drinks, try the Cocoa Lover's four-jar combo from Penzeys Spices (penzeys.com). For $12 you get two types of premium cocoa as well as fragrant ground Chinese cassia cinnamon and Penzey's own hot chocolate mix. As a bonus, each gift box is packed with cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, and whole nutmegs.
For those who like it really hot, there's the Fiery Gift set from Spice Appeal ($30, spiceappeal.com ). Six colorful, clear-topped stainless steel containers hold pepper varieties from around the world, like tiny but tart West African Bird Pepper.
A taste of the Mediterranean awaits in Vanns Italian Collection ($20, thespiceclub.net ). Each tin features a different Italian-inspired flavor: The Dolce Vita Blend--basil, garlic, parsley, lemon pepper, onion, and other spices--is fine for fish; Espresso Rub is recommended for roasts. - Diane Cole
COOK FOR ONE
Mini- or single-serving cookware is just the thing for solo meals or dining for two. It's also a crowd pleaser: In individual dishes, even tuna casserole has cachet.
Though possibly ineffective as prowler protection, the 4 3/4-inch-diameter Staub mini round dish and the 3-cup minisauce pan ($33 each, chefsresource.com ) are perfect for hot dips, sauces, and small side dishes.
Dishes shaped like an apple, a tomato, a pumpkin, and a green pepper--each with a stem-like lid handle--make up the munchkin-size stoneware set from Le Creuset petite casseroles. ($100, chefsresource.com ). Capacity: 8 to 13 ounces each.
The trouble with making a full-size Bundt cake is you end up eating a full-size Bundt cake. One cake mix fills four rounded nonstick minipans from kaisercast 3-cup pans ($17 each, chefscatalog.com ). Each comfortably serves two. - Michelle Andrews
FOR LI'L PIE HOLES
Foodies are finding that littler is more lovable. High-quality minis pack in more flavors and textures, and, best of all, because they're so small, you can try them all.
The 5-inch minipies in the Little Pie Sampler ($56 for four, littlepiecompany.com ) are cute, they don't take up much room, and they're just right for a singleton on a controlled pie binge. A sampler of Mississippi mud, apple, key lime, and the trademark sour cream apple walnut makes it possible to have a little taste without a lot of guilt. It's part of the reason U.S. News sends these pies as corporate thank-you gifts.
A box of two chocolates may seem stingy, but not if they're from Andrew Garrison Shotts, former executive pastry chef at the Russian Tea Room. The signature bonbons in the Jeweled two-chocolate gift box ($3.50, garrisonconfections.com ) each contain two flavors or textures--apple crumble has an apple fruit layer and a white- chocolate caramel ganache layer with apple pie spices--enrobed in dark or milk chocolate. Eat slowly so each flavor unfolds. Much better than a 1-pound bag of M&M s!
De rigueur in Victorian times, fruit-shaped ice creams gradually fell out of fashion until St. Clair's founder Barbara Zernike longed for molded ice creams from her childhood. Colorful 1-inch Mini Ice Cream Fruits ($18 for 12, stclairicecream.com ) are made from premium creams in flavors like ginger, walnut maple, and strawberry, then coated with a candy glaze. The half-ounce golden pears, red apples, and other fruits are shipped on dry ice and arrive so cold they'd stick to your tongue. Let them mellow in the freezer, then serve three to five per guest.
From the goats who live at 20-acre Westfield Farm in Massachusetts, owners Bob and Debby Stetson have crafted 1-ounce mini-rounds of award-winning Bluebonnet Goat Cheese ($5 for a package of three, chevre.com ). The Roquefort rind is intensely blue-green; the cheese is mild and creamy and offers the full dimensions of a wheel of ripened cheese. "Bigger blue logs are a lot more cost effective," says Bob Stetson. "But these are cute." - Caroline Hsu
TRAVEL TINY
With airlines cracking down on big carry-ons (and slapping luggage surcharges on passengers who pack heavy), your favorite traveler will be grateful for the gift of an undersize gizmo.
Taking a page from the popular PDA, the PicoPad ($4, picopad.com ) is a credit-card-size writing pad--complete with a stylus-type pen--that slips into a wallet or purse. It comes with 15 sticky-notes. The pen is a little tricky to write with, but it's handy in a pinch.
The Violight Travel Toothbrush Sanitizer ($30, violight.com ) uses a seven-minute burst of ultraviolet light to zap harmful, microscopic bugs that linger in your toothbrush. Dentists and hospitals use the same kind of technology.
If downloading an audio book into your iPod seems too much hassle, try this self-playing tome. Just plug the earphones in the Playaway ($35 to $45, playawaydigital.com ) and press play. It's pricier than print, and titles are limited to hits like The Da Vinci Code. The battery lasts plenty long (essential for a 16-hour book). The headphones aren't the most comfy, so if you become a serious Playawayer, you might invest in your own. Also David Sedaris's Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim sounded as if the author had cotton in his mouth.
Said to be the world's smallest digital camera (eat your heart out, James Bond), the Casio EX-S500 ($350, casio.com ) is only slightly larger than a credit card but doesn't sacrifice photo quality. It snaps 5-megapixel photos--detailed enough that you could blow them up into a poster--plus up to an hour of video. Anti-shake technology works great as long as you're in the bright outdoors. The front is almost all lens, which makes shooting a tad tricky. Slide your finger over any part of the lens, and whoops, there goes the photo. But for portability, this camera clicks.
Water bounces off it. Wind barely cuts through. Yet the Brooks L.S.D. Jacket ($85, brookssports.com ) breathes, so you won't feel as if you're in a sauna. Best of all for runners on the run, the silky "Lightweight Shelter Device" folds to the size of a cellphone, weighing in at a Nicole Richie-like 3.1 ounces. - Christopher Elliott
ROOM TO GROOM
Small, portable grooming aids can keep you beautiful wherever you're headed.
The Perricone Promise starter bag ($130, nvperriconemd.com ) is a doctor's case filled with six containers of youthening potions. The company claims quarter-ounce vials of vitamin C and Alpha Lipoic Acid Eye Area Therapy will banish puffy dark circles and fine lines. Try as a teaser, or use it as a travel set and recycle the doctor's bag as a new purse.
A tiny folding, plug-in hair dryer, a wee alarm clock, and an inflatable neck pillow keep you freshly coifed, rested, and on time, courtesy of the Brookstone 4-Piece Travel Gift Set ($50, brookstone.com ).
Rarely are products as cute and practical as the Sephora Holiday Round-A-Pout ($9, sephora.com ). The little acrylic ball twists apart, revealing four lip glosses with extra shimmer.
Woody's Grooming Body Deo Spray ($13, mensessentials.com ) does triple duty: It keeps you smelling good with a manly blend of sage and bay, hides the scent of recycled dirty laundry, and purportedly contains " pheromones." Voila --a nano chick magnet! - Caroline Hsu
TEENSY TOYS
No nano toys for toddlers! Tohey might swallow them whole. But for slightly older kids (and even some adults), playful stocking stuffers abound.
Alexander the Great sliced through it. A different sort of ingenuity is required to disassemble ThinkFun's Gordian's Knot ($10, thinkfun.com ), a brainteaser for ages 8 and up billed as "the world's most difficult take-apart puzzle." If you need to cheat (and we did), the 69 moves to pry apart the six interlocking plastic pieces are in the instruction booklet.
Posable, multicultural, inexpensive, and only 4 inches high, Groovy Girls Minis ($5 and up, manhattantoy.com ) are a plastic version of the rag-doll Groovy Girls. "A politically correct Barbie," says Susan Hancuff-Sellers of Tree Top Kids in McLean, Va.
Great fanfare has greeted LeapFrog's FLY Pentop Computer ($100, 866-334-5327), which looks like a pen but acts like a computer. "Totally innovative," raves Joanne Oppenheim, cofounder of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, which gave the FLY its Platinum Award. With special FLY paper, the Pentop reads aloud, calculates, plays games and melodies, and translates into Spanish. Just don't ask us how!
For elegant design and pocket-size fun for ages 8 and up (and younger with parental supervision), try the Lonpos 101 Pyramid and Rectangle Game ($17, micamericas.com , a Parents' Choice Gold Award winner. Choose from 101 two- and three-dimensional games at six levels of difficulty. Lon-pos.com has yet more options for this U.S. version of a top Taiwanese game.
The Scrambled States of America Game won awards for its painless introduction to geography. This year, there's SCRAMBLED STATES 2 ($6, 800-638-7568), a card game (for ages 6 and up) that requires players to match state cards by region, land mass, population, and color.
Inside each Cube World: stick people sticking together ($30 for two, amazon.com ) is . . . a stick figure! Attach cubes and the figures move from one to another--jumping rope, duking it out, and more. Cube World may not make your kid smarter but will boost his coolness quotient--a huge feat for a battery-powered, 2-inch-square cube. - Julia M. Klein
This story appears in the December 19, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.