are long, long gone, sadly. But I still remember the very first promotional item I ever received (while working in a chart-return record shop) - a pair of luminous yellow Jesus Jones cycling shorts. That same week I got a great NWA t-shirt. They looked horrendous together...

I spent many a happy hour in Bury's Vibes, buying up all the promo stuff that was surplus to requirements. Talk Talk CD in a wooden box like a school desk? That will do nicely thanks.

I once bought an Elvis Costello 7" single that came with a free copy of the Get Happy LP as a bonus. Do they still have such chart return shops? All I ever see now are 1-track promo CDs at 3-for-a-pound in Vinyl Exchange (name change long overdue) and CD-R promos (not collectable).

I was working at a radio station when Ice Cube's Lethal Injection album was released, and the record company gave away biro pens in the shape of syringes. Another tasteful freebie accompanied Flipper's American Grafishy: a tin of tuna chunks repackaged to look like dolphin meat.

Some years ago Edward Arnold, the educational books wing of Hodder Headline, published a biography of Mussolini. They displayed an uncharacteristically skittish touch with promo items handed out by the reps - packets of pasta bearing Il Duce's face and the legend 'Mussolinguini'.
I might still have mine at the back of the larder.

Working on local rags you probably get the lower end of the promo tat. The lowest I recall was a box of groceries from Lidl to mark a new store opening on our patch. Other items I have seen included a Devil Wears Prada lint remover and a Pulp Fiction foot massager.
I recall getting sent a sandal to promote some film about someone walking through a desert and also a petri dish you were supposed to leave in a warm place to see some fungus grow but I can't recall which film or album is was supposed to promote.
My favourite was a rather beautiful cake iced with the Superman logo to promote the last Superman flick.
They seem to have tailed off of late. The last one I got was to promote Lil Wayne's recent single Lollipop - you guessed it, a lollipop.

Promo box sent out in USA, soon withdrawn after complaint from Kelloggs. I sold my box for a tidy sum, before the bottom fell out of the packet, er, market.

"Have you got any badges, posters, stickers and T-shirts?"

but my favourite promotional thingamajigs were,

1. 1977 free Spitfire and ME109 planes with Victor Comic. Lost many years ago, probably within the week but always held dear.
2. 1978 Free Ring with first issue of Bullet with Skull and Crossbones Badge. Also lost probably within the week.
3. 1973 Disney's Robin Hood Cardboard Figures free in boxes of Weetabix.

I do recollect getting an issue of Select magazine in a box designed to look like a packet of Ariel. Wonder if I still have it...?

is a Led Zeppelin "object" that I saw at a fan convention in 1992. It was going for silly money...

From the internet:

Led Zeppelin had real Objects produced. That’s what was used to photograph the album’s black and white inner sleeves. Shortly thereafter, Alva Museum Graphics in New York was contracted to produce 1000 individually numbered 12″ tall black “Objects” for Swan Song to use in their promotion of the record. This is the only way and the only time “The Object” was ever released by Swan Song/Atlantic Records. On each side at the base of “The Object” is the following, LED ZEPPELIN, “THE OBJECT” c 1976 SWAN SONG INC, PRESENCE, _#_/1000. Beware as there are many fakes available and on the market.