A gift shop is a store primarily selling souvenirs relating to a particular topic, often to simply provide evidence that the consumer has visited that location. The items sold are generally fairly trivial, often including coffee mugs, stuffed animals, t-shirts, postcards, and other souvenirs. Popular slang names for gift shop include 'tourist trap' and 'rubber tomahawk factory.'
Gift shops are normally found in areas with frequent tourism. Such places include zoos, aquariums, national parks, beaches, and other popular tourist destinations.
A mug is a sturdily built type of cup often used for drinking hot beverages, such as coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. Mugs, by definition, have handles and often hold a larger amount of fluid than other types of cup. The standard mug holds approximately 12 fluid ounces of liquid, double a tea cup. In more formal settings a mug is usually not used for serving hot beverages, with a teacup or coffee cup being preferred. Shaving mugs can be used to assist in wet shaving.
Many mugs are made of ceramic materials such as earthenware, bone china, porcelain or stoneware. Some are made from strengthened glass, such as Pyrex. Other materials, including plastic, steel and enameled metal are used where break resistance is at a premium, such as for campers. Techniques such as silk screen printing or decals can be used to apply decorations; these are fired onto the mug to ensure permanence.
A stuffed animal is a toy animal sewn from cloth, plush, or other textiles, and stuffed with straw, beans, plastic pellets, cotton, synthetic fibers, or other similar materials. Stuffed animals are also known as plush toys (U.S. English) from plush, the outer material used, and soft toys or cuddly toys (British English). They are made in many different forms, some resembling real animals, some in a caricature with emphasis on different features, some in the form of Legendary creatures or Cartoon characters.
Some stuffed animals are very old – home made cloth dolls stuffed with straw go back to at least the 1830s, perhaps much older. The most well known type of stuffed toy is likely the teddy bear. They are often used as comfort objects.
A T-shirt (or tee shirt) is a shirt which is pulled on over the head to cover most of a person's torso. A T-shirt is usually buttonless, collarless, and pocketless, with a round neck and short sleeves. The sleeves of the T-shirt extend at least slightly over the shoulder but not completely over the elbow (in short-sleeve version). A shirt that is either longer or shorter than this ceases to be a T-shirt,[citation needed] but when longer is often referred to as a "long sleeve T-shirt". T-shirts are typically made of cotton or polyester fibers (or a mix of the two), knitted together in a jersey stitch that gives a T-shirt its distinctive soft texture. T-shirts can be decorated with text and/or pictures, and are sometimes used to advertise (see human billboard).
A postcard or post card is a rectangular piece of thick paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an envelope and at a lower rate than a letter. Stamp collectors distinguish between postcards (which require a stamp) and postal cards (which have the postage pre-printed on them). While a postcard is usually printed by a private company, individual or organization, a postal card is issued by the relevant postal authority. The United States Postal Service defines a postcard as: rectangular, at least 3-½ inches high x 5 inches long x .007 inch thick and no more than 4-¼ inches high x 6 inches long x .016 inches thick; (in metric; 12.7 cm x 8.9 cm) however, some postcards have deviated from this (for example, shaped postcards).
