By Oliver Farrimond
SCOTS parents showered their children with more than £160 million worth of unwanted presents this Christmas.
And 40 per cent of youngsters were left feeling hard-done by after being given a gift costing less than a tenner – with aunts and uncles bearing the brunt of their fury.
It means that the average Scots parent wasted £42.04 on presents – the highest such total in Britain.
The figure is also almost one-and-a-half times the UK average figure, where mums and dads shelled-out just £28.48 on superfluous gifts.
Christmas left one in six Scots kids feeling “disappointed” with the presents they received, according to a new poll, with 17 per cent of those left upset by receiving a book.
Computer games were found to be the most pleasing pressies for Scottish children.
The study, conducted by a trading website, also revealed that 30 per cent of children in Scotland moved on quickly to the next present after opening a gift they didn’t like.
Julia Brown of www.swapit.co.uk claimed fussy kids meant the festive season now resulted in hundreds of millions of pounds of waste.
Miss Brown said: “Young people are becoming increasingly fussy making it more difficult for family and friends to choose the right Christmas present.
“To see over £160 million spent in Scotland alone on unwanted presents during such tough times is a huge waste.”
The total value of unwanted presents for the whole of the UK was more than £1.2 billion.
Unwanted
The poll also revealed that Scots children love computer games presents the most, and books the least.
And even if kids were happy enough with their parents presents, the survey found that uncles and aunts were considered the “worst” family members for unwanted gifts.
Miss Brown added that online trading websites like www.swapit.co.uk were an ideal place to trade away unwanted Christmas presents.
She said: “To prevent millions of unwanted presents lying at the back of a wardrobe, we are launching the UK’s first ever online Swap Your Presents Week.
“Children can go online and trade their presents for something they actually want – it will be like a second Christmas!”
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