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Canadian university student unions are baffled after receiving a number of mystery packages containing everything from sex toys to light bulbs.

Unsolicited and anonymous packages were sent through Amazon to more than 10 student organisations.

Some have received as many as 15 parcels since November, worth as much as C$1,000 ($799; £571) total.

Many assumed it was an elaborate and costly hoax but police have since been called on to investigate.

Thunder Bay, Ontario, RCMP Constable Darryl Waruk told the CBC that Amazon told him it may have been a marketing ploy from a company in China.

Parcels have included phone chargers, ear phones, light bulbs, an iPad case and numerous sex toys.

"One was like a mint greenish multi-setting vibrator with like a rose gold end and it was so bougie," Ryerson University student union vice president Camryn Harlick told campus paper The Eyeopener, which broke the story.

The Toronto college is one of many across the country that received the packages.

Amazon said it cannot take the products back, since they were bought by a third party. The company says it is investigating but told student groups it cannot reveal the purchaser's information for privacy reasons.

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The University of Manitoba Student Union donated the sex toys to an LGBTQ student group to use as a prize for a fundraiser at the college, which is in the Manitoba province capital of Winnipeg.

"I was thinking it was kind of strange that we got this package," student union president Tanjit Nagra told the CBC.

"To be honest, at first I thought, perhaps, maybe it was a staff member [who ordered it] and someone was embarrassed and didn't claim it."

"But then once we saw there are students' unions across Canada are getting the same thing then we were like OK, there is something going on, right?"