I think a set of steak knives is a fine gift.

May 12, 2023 10:52 AM

There are several examples in tv and film of “a set of steak knives” as a punchline to mean a crappy gift. Why? What’s funny about steak knives? I’m particularly interested as steak knives as a bad gift in office/sales culture. Was this a common practice? I’m seeing more examples of this in the 90s-2000s, and would appreciate any available historical context that might help me understand. Examples inside.

A Few Good Men
Glengarry Glen Ross
The OC

posted by OrangeVelour to Media & Arts (30 answers total)

In Glengarry Glen Ross, the joke is the contrast between first prize and second prize. Steak knives aren’t necessarily a bad gift, but first prize is a car. Which is more valuable? The point is not the gifts themselves; it’s the incentive structure, further evidenced by third prize.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:56 AM on May 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

I would bet just about everything I have that this trope originated with Glengarry Glen Ross and the remaining ones are references to it. (The play came out in the mid-eighties.) Why a "set of steak knives" as the crappy second prize rather than something else of negligible value compared to a car? I can't say for sure, but my guess is that it derives from the late-seventies/early-eighties TV infomercials for Ginsu knives, which featured the Ron Popeil-style hard sell and were inescapable at the time.
posted by Daily Alice at 11:08 AM on May 12, 2023 [11 favorites]

I have always assumed the reference is to old game shows, where the loser would get some "lovely parting gifts," stereotypically a set of steak knives.
posted by dono at 11:10 AM on May 12, 2023 [29 favorites]

I think Glengarry Glen Ross was hugely influential among screenwriters, and a Few Good Men was pretty influential in pop culture when they were theatrically released right around the same time. I was a movie nerd back then and basically had Alec Baldwin’s scene memorized. It doesn’t take much more than that for a meme to be created and endure through repetition.
posted by skewed at 11:11 AM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

My hunch is similar to dono's; it's something that was one of a small handful of go-to "parting gifts" that game shows would give to the loser. Usually it was steak knives or a year's supply of Turtle Wax.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:12 AM on May 12, 2023 [13 favorites]

Think of it as metaphor similar to "Second Place is the First Loser". Like in GGR, most game shows at the time had something big for the main winner (like a car or a week long vacation), but the consolation prize for the "losers" was something much smaller, like a set of steak knives.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:12 AM on May 12, 2023

Steak knives were a popular MLM sales item during that era (e.g. Cutco) so that may have helped to position them as a second-tier gift.
posted by credulous at 11:18 AM on May 12, 2023 [20 favorites]

I have always assumed the reference is to old game shows, where the loser would get some "lovely parting gifts," stereotypically a set of steak knives.
I think Jeopardy's 'lovely parting gifts' used to include a boardgame version of Jeopardy.

the joke is the contrast between first prize and second prize.

Think about that in comparison to winning 1st tens of thousands of dollars, or a $10 board game.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:35 AM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

My mom and dad were both raised middle-class in north Jersey/NYC, but my mom by children of working class German immigrants, my dad by middle-class Jews (not sure if this is relevant - could be a red herring). In any case, my mom was raised to think that a good gift should never be too practical - whereas my dad, not so much. At some point before I was born he bought her a nice special set of cookware as a gift, which resulted in a bit of tiff (though one they later enjoyed laughing about). So in short, I don't think it's universal, but some people definitely would view steak knives, however nice, as not suitable for a gift.
posted by coffeecat at 11:42 AM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Game show parting gifts, aka consolation prizes, often donated by sponsors: boxes of Rice A Roni, "the San Francisco Treat"; cases of Turtle Wax; Samsonite luggage; sets of steak knives (Cutco is mentioned above, and I remember Ginsu brand).
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:47 AM on May 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

Steak knives in that era were often imports from developing nations just getting into the type of manufacturing that could produce serrated metal blades: steel stamping. So these prizes could be imported wholesale for cheap and marked up a lot or made to seem more valuable due to their association with a premium good, steak.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:10 PM on May 12, 2023 [8 favorites]

Also, there is a wide-ranging superstition that it's bad luck to give a knife as a gift.
posted by Hatashran at 12:15 PM on May 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

I grew up in the 70s and 80s in the UK. TV game show prizes were things like sandwich toasters, cutlery sets, coffee machines, nests of tables, novelty landline phones, radio controlled cars, kitchen mixers - goods that seemed aspirational to a typical working-class viewer of the time. Steak knives were not something a typical family would own, because they wouldn't be eating much steak, and would only have seen a steak knife in a rare visit to a restaurant, or on TV.

They were also very cheap as infinitewindow states. I can remember buying kitchen knives when I was a student, and the really cheap stuff came from Brazil or India, not Sheffield. It did the job though.
posted by pipeski at 1:11 PM on May 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

I’m friends with someone who used to work phone sales for cutco, and apparently the set of steak knives was often a free add-on (no clue how long that was true for.) So it’s like, someone bought a thing for themselves and it came with a thing they didn’t want, so now they are regifting it - an action often perceived as rude. As someone who uses those steak knives often though, I gotta say, they are great and I would not turn my nose up at a few more!
posted by Mizu at 2:16 PM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Friends of ours received three sets of steak knives as wedding presents. After the first set they were no longer such a great gift.

(We didn't get any, so they kindly gave us one set, which we're still using a third of a century later.)
posted by metonym at 2:42 PM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Banks used to lure customers with items like toasters and steak knives, which were offered when people opened new accounts, so I think there’s a whiff of “re-gifting” around them.
posted by carmicha at 2:59 PM on May 12, 2023

Yes, the steak knives we used when I was a kid were a free gift from the bank. May have been from opening an account; I never knew the details
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:15 PM on May 12, 2023

A good friend of mine said, when I sent out our wedding registry that contained steak knives, that "you should never give a set of steak knives as a wedding present" because in his family, that was understood to be bad luck. Neither he nor I know where that particular superstition came from, but apparently it was a thing in the circles in which he grew up (1970's New England).
posted by pdb at 3:59 PM on May 12, 2023

My ex took the steak knives in the divorce, which sucked because they were 1. nicely forged, not stamped and 2. a wedding gift from my now-passed great-aunt. These days I don’t each much steak anyway. So it goes.
posted by infinitewindow at 4:34 PM on May 12, 2023

If by steak knife we mean a cheap, serrated-edge blade with an 'ivory' plastic handle, be advised Shell filling stations were giving these out as premiums in the late 1960s, so I think the trope predates 90s movies.
more info, with a pic
posted by Rash at 4:43 PM on May 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

The movie Scrooged (1988) has a Christmas Past sequence where Frank Cross (Bill Murry) gives his girlfriend Claire Phillips (Karen Allen) a set if Ginsu knives.
posted by achrise at 4:44 PM on May 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Yeah, that's the brand I remember from ads on late-night television, in the 1970s.
posted by Rash at 4:45 PM on May 12, 2023

Steak knives were a popular MLM sales item during that era

Also promotional premiums. My family's steak knives when I was a kid were accumulated one a week from a local supermarket.

{Also over the years our bowls and plates, encyclopedia set, and pots and pans.}
posted by Mitheral at 5:10 PM on May 12, 2023

As a child of 70s New England, I remember the admonishment about avoiding steak knives as wedding gifts. I thought it was some sort of “funny” har har about inadvertently providing a fighting couple with a murder weapon that might be used when one of them (ok, probably she) burnt the meat to a crisp or some such, but I may be fabricating that memory.
posted by carmicha at 5:25 PM on May 12, 2023

Best answer: The 70s and 80s were permeated with late-night ads for sets of chef's knives (often displayed cutting ludicrous things like rubber hoses etc), and there'd always be "BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!!", and you also get steak knives thrown in. So the steak knives are the low-value part of a low-value set of knives.

First example I found.
posted by pompomtom at 5:28 PM on May 12, 2023 [7 favorites]

There was this company called Ginsu that made really good knives once upon a time. They really leaned into infomercials and other sales tactics and as they got more popular the quality tanked to an almost comical point. Cutco was a major competitor, among others, and they just ran with the crappy knife set idea and at some point it became a pop culture in-joke.

My friend's parents had a set of original Ginsu knives, and I imagine they still do because they were pretty decent quality. I remember buying a few at some point decade later and they were so cheap you could literally bend the blade off the handle. I tossed them and bought a set of Wüsthoffs and never looked back. (Wüsthoffs also suffered from quality degradation later but were still okay at that point).
posted by ananci at 7:04 PM on May 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

Another vote for existing popular trope, influenced by game shows, which influenced a popular play, which became a popular movie, in the process further influencing the popular culture.

I don’t know if the author has dissected this or anyone has done so for him, but Mamet’s very popular 80s work often features high stakes game themes, usually revolving around a bad bet, where second prize sucks (GGGR, Speed the Plow, House of Games). I think it was part of the zeitgeist and so, recursively, was Mamet.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:23 AM on May 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Oh, I forgot to mention, the steak knives set was the add on free gift when you bought the full 20 piece Ginsu knife set. Since it was a free gift, the quality went down much faster than the other knives' quality. Other companies noticed that steak knives were apparently a thing people wanted and started adding them as free gifts even to totally unrelated products and services because they were so cheap to buy in bulk from whatever factory was churning them out. Yes it was weird. The 90s were a weird time for all of us.
posted by ananci at 7:13 AM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

The 70s and 80s were permeated with late-night ads for sets of chef's knives ..."BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
I remember this too - 'but wait, there's more! you also get a free set of steak knives with every order' not only when selling knives but pretty much anything kitchen-related.
posted by dg at 9:09 PM on May 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

All this talk of free steak knives reminded me of the episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where they had to take the dodgy preacher off the air for selling things during his broadcasts.

"Once again, this is the Reverend Little Ed Pembrook, along with the Merciful Sisters of Melody, comin' to you live from the studios of WKRP, high atop the Flimm building in downtown Cincinnati. Fellow strugglers, it has been a troubled week for Little Ed. I was almost pinned to the mat of despair. But I rose to struggle against the very management of this station. And, yes, they saw the wisdom of my ways. For though they play the heathen hateful noise known to us as the abomination of rock and roll, I will not speak out against them. Though they threatened me and tried to cast me out, my lips are sealed. Nor will I urge you to inundate this station with cards and letters condemning their actions. No, sir. That is not my way. For if you are good and true, you will write those letters without my asking. And when you do, you might inquire about our Dead Sea Scrolls steak knives, which are free when you make a love offering of five dollars or more."

posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:29 PM on May 15, 2023 [1 favorite]