40th Birthday Ideas

If you’re scouring the web in search of 40th birthday ideas, there are two ways of going about it. 

You can can grab the first tacky gift that appears or you can choose one whose permanence will be far longer than the time it takes to tear off the wrapping paper. Imagine it was your 40th birthday. 

What would you like to receive?

OK, but supposing your mates couldn’t stretch to a Porsche 911 and a spacewalk - what would you accept instead? 

The best 40th birthday gift isn’t the most expensive or the flashiest.  It’s the one that shows you’ve gone to the bother of considering what the recipient might actually like.  That’s right - the thought really does count, so better make it a good one.

Thankfully, we’ve done the thinking for you, and have assembled our own shortlist of 40th birthday ideas.  The best part is that you can still claim the credit for conceiving of such a charming gift - we promise we won’t tell.

40th Birthday Ideas - Our Top Tips

A Decade in a Box

It doesn’t take a calculus degree to deduce that if you’re verging on 40, you were a child of the 70s. 

The 70s may have been typified by rubbish hair and glam rock, but it wasn’t all bad - just think about the sweets: Fizzy Cola Bottles, Love Hearts, Golf Ball Bubble Gum and Fruit Salads. 

Merely picturing such a cornucopia of candy is enough to make you nostalgic for the 70s - even if you weren’t old enough to have lived through them. 

Our 1970s Decade Box, filled to overflowing with authentic sweets from that era, is enough to have any 40-year-old reverting to a childlike state, complete with short trousers and skinned knees.  The sweets may be from the 70s incidentally, but they haven’t been sitting in a box for 40 years - each one has been freshly made, so your birthday pal can get stuck into them. 

Alternatively, they may wish to preserve the sweets within their charming 1970s Decade Box for another 40 years before flogging the lot on eBay.  Either way, at least your gift won’t have been in vain.

Pamper them with a Hamper

Most 40th birthday hampers contain such sensible grown-up gifts as bath salts and shower gel.  Not ours.  Our hampers are packed to the gunnels with Strawberry Bootlaces,  Tootie Frooties, Fizzers and Drumsticks.  They’re not so good for bathing with, but they taste amazing and make for a great 40th birthday gift. 

Best of all, every Retro Sweet Hamper contains an authentic 1970s or 80s comic!  Which beloved childhood role models will feature in yours - Dennis the Menace? Beryl the Peril?  And more to the point, will you be able to resist opening the hamper to have a peek prior to gift-wrapping it?

A Million 40th Birthday Ideas

Alternatively, you may prefer to purchase an entire jar of Raspberry Millions. 

Remember those teeny-tiny sweets you used to spend all your lunch money on, much to your mum’s consternation? 

Back then, you could only afford a handful, but now you can treat your birthday mate to a jar full of the chewy little devils.  All that’s left to do is inscribe a witty aside about purchasing one million for every year they’ve been on the planet and you’re sorted! 

Who’d have thought that hunting for 40th birthday ideas could be such a sweet pleasure?