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Forget the shiny gold-plated statues, what’s inside the ‘goody-goody’ bags at this year's Oscars?

The Everyone Wins gift bag that Oscar nominees will receive contains swag worth $205,000. Pictures from Distinctive Assets Expand
In this year’s gift bag there is an emergency hammer for "freeing pets trapped in hot cars". Pictures from Distinctive Assets Expand

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The Everyone Wins gift bag that Oscar nominees will receive contains swag worth $205,000. Pictures from Distinctive Assets

The Everyone Wins gift bag that Oscar nominees will receive contains swag worth $205,000. Pictures from Distinctive Assets

In this year’s gift bag there is an emergency hammer for "freeing pets trapped in hot cars". Pictures from Distinctive Assets

In this year’s gift bag there is an emergency hammer for "freeing pets trapped in hot cars". Pictures from Distinctive Assets

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The Everyone Wins gift bag that Oscar nominees will receive contains swag worth $205,000. Pictures from Distinctive Assets

Celia Walden

There’s only one aspect of tonight’s Oscars which has been severely curtailed — and that’s the Oscar gifting circus.

The all-important gift bags, however — which have nothing to do with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but can contain up to six figures’ worth of booty (from space flights to breast lifts) have been sent out in all their usual unpared-down, unscaled-back, preposterously lavish glory. 

Only this year, there appears to be a common theme.

“With the Oscars being all about diversity and inclusion,” says my LA film source, “gifting companies have been focusing on the same message.

Because if the gifts are ethical and ‘woke’ enough, that will help do away with a lot of the discomfort or guilt the recipients might be feeling right now. Which makes everyone a winner.”

The most famous Oscar gift bag is actually called the ‘Everyone Wins’ bag.

This Oscar swag-travaganza has been sent out for 19 years in a row by celebrity and product-placement company, Distinctive Assets, and gets almost as much coverage as the ceremony itself, thanks to its hilarious list of contents — and the fact that it is only sent out to Oscar nominees in the Best Actor and Actress, Best Director, and Supporting Actor and Actress categories.

To tone this one down would be sacrilegious on a deep consumerist level. But if you were to make it the most woke swag bag of all time? Not so much a goody bag as the ‘goody-goody’ bag of 2021?

Well, then everyone really is a winner.

The contents list could have been made up by a Saturday Night Live scriptwriter.

Among the five-star holidays and treatments are Cozy Earth loungewear “made from sustainably sourced silk and bamboo”, Hotsy Totsy Haus “vegan bath bombs”, Loci sneakers “made from repurposed plastic”, the anti-racist children’s book Change-Maker Village, a Peta emergency hammer “to save dogs trapped in hot cars” and tote bag “which raises money for disaster relief efforts”, mindfulness classes, Hemp Intimate Oils and a “meditation headband”.

Distinctive Assets’ founder, Lash Fary — known as the Sultan of Swag — says “this year’s contents are special.The companies we are featuring embrace diversity, inclusion, health and philanthropy and are giving back to their communities and the world at large in significant ways.”

Which not only coheres with the 93rd Academy Awards’ ethos in these strange and worrying times, but the direction Hollywood is moving in more generally.

“Covid may have made it particularly important for brands and individuals to be putting out the right message around the Oscars this year,” says my film source, “but I doubt things will ever go back to the way they were."
The ceremony’s ratings have steadily declined in recent years, and given how blighted the entertainment industry has been by the pandemic, this year may well see that trend continue.  

But despite the hopeless Golden Globes, the underwhelming Critic’s Choice Awards and the largely forgotten Grammys, I will be there on my sofa, with my ethically sourced popcorn.

If only because after years of being told the Academy Awards will be “different” and tuning in to find them exactly the same — this year they really will be.

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