SUCK UK Gift Fans Around the World: Creative Inspiration from South Korea, France, Australia & Japan
We ship to a lot of countries. 80, to be exact. That much we know. But what's been harder to track, until recently, is what actually happens to our gifts after they land. Because some people open a box, enjoy the thing, and move on with their lives, which is entirely reasonable, and then there are the other people. The ones who take a gift, run with the idea behind it, build something entirely new on top of it, write about it in careful detail, or feature it in a design publication their city has been reading for years.Those are the people this article is about.
We've started keeping a closer eye on who's been featuring our gifts and why, and the picture that's emerged is a good one. It turns out SUCK UK has fans in corners of the world we hadn't necessarily expected, and a few of them have been doing quite interesting things with what we've made.
So here's the first in what we're planning as an ongoing series: a handful of examples from different countries, each a completely different way of engaging with a gift.
South Korea: The Book Rest Lamp Gift That Inspired a Stained-Glass Masterpiece
This is our favourite kind of story.
A Korean maker and design blogger came across our Book Rest Lamp and liked it so much that she'd rather build her own version from scratch in stained glass. She documented the whole process on her blog, right the way from the initial sketch to the finished piece, and the results are something else entirely.
The Gift Concept She Started With
Our Book Rest Lamp is a house-shaped LED reading light where your book sits on top like a roof, so you can set it down mid-chapter without losing your place. It's one of those gifts that does two jobs at once without making a fuss about it: reading light and bookmark in one compact object.Lee Sang Gin, who designed it for us, built something that looks like it belongs on a bedside table whether the book is there or not.
The original specs for the book rest lamp:
What She Built From It
She took that core concept and rebuilt it entirely in her own materials. The end result features a wooden base to support both the lamp and the book, with a full stained-glass structure built up around it in intricate detail: a house design drawn from Anne of Green Gables, complete with windows, trees, and a small garden rendered in coloured glass.Partway through the build she swapped out the switch to make it compatible with LED bulbs, documenting that adjustment with the same matter-of-factness as everything else.
She linked back to us as the original inspiration, which we found rather touching. She saw what we were going for and took it somewhere we'd never have taken it ourselves, and a gift doing that for someone is about as good an outcome as we can imagine.
France: How a Cat Scratch Turntable Gift Racked Up 65,000 YouTube Views
The French have always had very specific opinions about what constitutes good design. It turns out our Cat Scratch Turntable Gift is one of the things they're prepared to approve of.The Coverage That's Still Driving Traffic Seven Years On
François Charron, one of France's best-known tech and gadget writers, covered the Cat Scratch Turntable back in 2018 with an article titled, roughly, “The cat scratcher for the greatest DJs.”The accompanying YouTube video now has 65,000 views, which for a cat gift review is, by any reasonable measure, quite a lot.
What's interesting about the French coverage is the angle. François didn't write about it as a novelty, something you buy for a laugh and forget about. He wrote about it as a piece of considered design that happened to be very funny, and there's a real difference between those two things.
What Makes the Gift Worth Writing About
- Spinnable platter with textured scratch surfaces cats actually use
- Poseable tone arm for interactive play
- Public Enemy-style logo with a dog in the crosshairs
- Flat-pack cardboard, 240 × 42 × 320mm, 0.3kg, ships without drama
- £19.99
François seemed to clock that, and his readers did too, given that the video still racks up views seven years on.
We've written about Ricky Gervais calling it 'fantastic' on The Romesh Ranganathan Show, Oprah featuring us on her Favourite Things list, and Taylor Swift being spotted with one on telly.
An independent French gadget journalist covering a cat gift in 2018 and that coverage still pulling its weight in 2026 is its own kind of endorsement, and we're happy to take it.
Australia: A Brisbane Design Blog Took the Legless Corkscrew Gift Seriously
Looks Like Good Design is a Brisbane-based design appreciation site that does exactly what the name suggests: they find things that have been designed well, write about them clearly and without too much fuss, and put them in front of an audience that's there specifically because it cares about how objects are made and why.What Caught Their Eye
They featured our Legless Corkscrew as a piece of industrial design, the kind of recognition that means something to us, because that's what it is.Their write-up describes a corkscrew with “more character than most bars” that “just happens to look like it wandered off a pirate ship and lost a leg on the way.” Which is, more or less, exactly the brief.
The Gift That Takes Its Job Seriously
The Legless Corkscrew Gift is a fully functional waiter's friend corkscrew: integrated easy-open lever, foil cutter, beer bottle opener. It works exactly the way a quality bar tool should.- Stainless steel and matt black rubber build
- Lever mechanism for effortless cork removal
- Serrated foil cutter and bottle opener built in
- 45 × 132 × 13mm | 0.1kg
The Looks Like Good Design piece captures exactly what makes that balance worth writing about: it's not silly design pretending to be functional, and it's not functional design that happens to have a costume on. It's both things, neither undermining the other.
Japan: The BBQ Toolbox Gift That Confused a Japanese Fire Pit Blog, in a Good Way
The Japanese blog Flamin-ko covers fire pits and outdoor cooking, and they featured our BBQ Toolbox as part of a roundup of interesting BBQ designs from around the world.Their framing of it was something we found rather charming.
How They Introduced It
They called it a “toolbox-style fire pit,” spent some time making absolutely clear that this isn't something you build yourself but an actual product someone designed and sells on purpose, noted the price, approximately ¥12,600 at the time of writing, and then walked their readers through what happens when you open it up.What happens when you open it up is rather good.
What the Gift Actually Does
- Carrying handle folds down to become the legs
- Lid becomes the warming rack
- Removable fuel tray for charcoal with adjustable vent
- 8×15-inch stainless steel grill surface, far from a toy-sized barbecue
- Coated in high-temperature red paint
- Folds back down into a convincing-looking toolbox for transport
- 200 × 220 × 405mm | 3.7kg
We'll add that our own product description ends with the line “just be sure to pick up the right metal box from the garage, you'll look like a right numpty trying to set fire to a box of spanners,” which tells you everything you need to know about the spirit in which this gift was designed.
Are We in Your Part of the World?
This series is going to keep going, and we're looking for the next round of fan features from wherever they might be.Already featured a SUCK UK gift on your site or social channels?
We'd love to know about it. If you get in touch, we'll consider featuring you in the next Fans Around the World post. Drop us a line at frontdesk@suck.uk.com and tell us where to find you.
Want to feature our gifts for the first time?
We're very happy to talk to bloggers, journalists, content creators, and design sites who'd like product information, high-res images, or samples to review.
Same address: frontdesk@suck.uk.com and we'll sort you out.
Browse all SUCK UK gifts
Want to stock our gifts in your store?
All four products featured here are available to trade customers worldwide. Our trade team is at trade@suck.uk.com.