If you cast your mind back far enough, you'll remember the days when birthday parties didn't end with a hangover, and instead you were rewarded with a goodie bag. Filled with everything that a six-year-old could ever want - chiefly in the form of glucose - it was the best part about socialising outside of school hours. But nowadays, us ordinary folk wake up with a raging headache and rollicking shame about what we may have said or done the night prior.
This is not the reality for the top one per cent, however. This year's Oscar nominees are expected to be given lavish gifts worth up to $100,000 during Sunday's Academy Awards - and it all comes in the nostalgic form of a goodie bag. Yippie.
This year's unofficial "goodie bag" has been put together by Distinctive Assets. And it reportedly contains some enviable gifts, including free trips to some of the most exotic locales in the world. This year's nominees are rumoured to have received all-inclusive holidays to Tanzania, Hawaii and Greece, as well as some more quotidian items such as Mexican soda and locally-grown oranges. I mean, you've got to stay healthy for all that travelling, right?
The Academy doesn't hand out its own goodie bags anymore for a range of reasons. And as could be expected, it has something to do with tax. The Academy actually sued Distinctive Assets last year for using the word "Oscar" on its goodie bag.
Now it's just called the "Everybody Wins" bag, which, of course, is a little ironic as Leonardo DiCaprio will attest to. The bag isn't handed out at the ceremony itself, and it's generally just seen as a chance for companies to score some product promotion opportunities with some of the hottest celebrities out there.
The grab bags include a range of goodies, from luxury treats to more exotic and unusual items. This year's lucky nominees can expect to find conflict-free diamond jewellery, sessions with renowned celebrity personal trainers, weight loss supplements and a lifetime's supply of foundation. However, some items are decidedly more bizarre; there are underarm patches to hide sweat, a genetic sequencing kit, a Danish cookbook, a book about the founder of Barre, luxurious pet food, mud toothpaste, makeup formulated for older skin, designer lunchboxes and... maple syrup.
Yes, it's certainly a step up from a piece of birthday cake and a balloon, isn't it?
This year's Oscar nominees include the likes of Sally Hawkins, Gary Oldman, Frances McDormand, Margot Robbie and Daniel Day-Lewis, and it certainly looks like they have something to look forward to. Sure, even if they don't win the coveted Academy trophy, they still get to go home with a lifetime's supply of foundation and some Mexican soda. Doesn't sound too bad to me, at all.
In related news, Jennifer Lawrence has described the "nightmare" of filming the nude scenes in Red Sparrow.