What's in the Oscar goodie bag?

At the Oscars, nobody goes home a loser. Some go home with an award and the others that are deprived of the Oscar statuette, take home a goodie bag worth $45,000 (approx Rs24,30,000) as a consolation prize.

The Los Angeles-based firm Distinctive Assets has been handing out the catchily named ‘Everybody Wins at the Oscars Nominee Gift Bag’ for the past 11 years.
Oscars organisers, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, stopped delivering lavish gift baskets to guests in 2007 after their contents came under closer scrutiny from the American tax authorities.

Distinctive Assets’s party bags are not endorsed by the Academy, but that hasn’t stopped the swag this year. The company announced that nominees would be receiving trips abroad; hand-illustrated tennis shoes, acupuncture sessions, a $5,000 (approx Rs2,70,000) plastic surgery voucher, a week’s stay at a weight-loss retreat and a year’s membership to Heathrow’s private VIP service. The bundle also includes more everyday items including an elaborate lint remover priced at $19.99 (approx Rs1,000), condoms, crockery that claims to help you lose weight and, for the domestic movie star, a bottle of Windex, priced $3.99 (approx Rs2,000).

No doubt, for the performers, the goodies are no match to the golden statuette. But for the more mercenary members of Hollywood, they’re technically a profit on the statuettes. While an Oscar costs $400 dollars to make, if a winner or their heirs wants to sell the gong, they must first offer the Academy refusal, at a pre-agreed price of just one dollar.