One word: Windows.
Really? I have the one marketed for cats, and it works pretty well. There is much less death pong floating around than if I left the leavings to ferment in the box. 
**Robitussen **- just got over a bad cold. As far as I can tell it didn’t do squat. NyQuil on the other hand was sleep inducing bliss.
Flu shots - I’ve gotten the flu after getting a shot; I’ve been healthy when I’ve skipped the shot; and the other two pairings in equal amount. Zero correlation that I can detect.
Super glue - Great for adhering paper to fingers, and the glue tube to the lid; no better than white glue for anything else.
43 posts so far, and nobody has mentioned the notorious … pocket fisherman !
(a cheap plastic fold-up fishing rod, heavily advertised on 1970’s late-night TV shows as a Christmas gift. It became famous for breaking as soon as you took it out of the box.)
I had one that I used for ten years. It finally broke when I had a monster Northern on the hook. I kept it in my compact car so I could fish if I was driving around and decided to fish at a lake I saw.
Jiffy Pop. I don’t know who those people are in the commercial that manage to get it to look like a perfectly inflated weather balloon, but mine usually ends up like this.
I live in the UK, but like many US films and TV shows. 
So I bought a multi-region DVD player from Phlps. The advert said ‘multi-region’. the manual said ‘multi-region’.
It only plays DVDs for region 2 (UK). :smack:
I contacted Phlps. They haven’t replied.
I bought a game from Shrapnel Games that is an updated Windows version of an old DOS game I loved from about 10 years ago.
That thing is unplayably slow- I’d rather play it on my 486/dx266 with 4 megs of ram that I had in 1996 than play it on an Athlon XP 3000+ with a gig of ram and a 256mb GeForce FX5200! It’s that slow.
Combine that with the fact that the jerks have a no refunds policy, and their support drones won’t even respond to my support ticket request (polite & nice), and you get in my opinion a product that COMPLETELY fails. (well, in all respects except to fleece unsuspecting and nostalgic wargamers).
There was one brand (I forget which) which came with a little sliding cutter. It worked perfectly, since you didn’t have to twist the wrap to cut it. However, I’ve got the knack now, and don’t have problems.
As for things that don’t work, just about any cough medicine. Most superglues don’t work on the things that I want to glue together, which are within their supposed range.
For a second, I thought that you were going to say that you nearly had a heart attack because your pacemaker failed. Wouldn’t that be a failure!
For me, Sudafed and other nasal decongestants never work.
It makes hexagonal water, an essential health ingredient that no one ever noticed before. And it’s only $500!
Assuming the Philips DVD players sold in the UK are the same as the ones sold here, it is multi-region, but by default it’s set to whatever your home region is and you have to change it yourself. It’s a bit like a secret code, usually involving opening the the tray then pressing several numbers in order. Once you do, a new menu will appear that allows you to change the region code to anything you like, or to change it to no region at all.
Depilatories.
A third vote of hate for “superglue.” SPIT is a better adhesive.
Those home electrolysis devices. (How do you put a line through letters? I forget.) Their real name is Give Yourself An Infection devices.
Barring the placebo effect, HeadOn is utterly useless, and may actually be harmful.
That’s what I was going to suggest. I’ve found that a cotton ball soaked in undiluted bleach and left to sit for several hours will work wonders on mold and mildew stains.
Heh.
In my experience using the Works toilet cleaner on the tubs works even better for hard water/iron stains than the tub cleaner does. I think it’s because it’s thicker.
I can’t come up with anything that completely fails that hasn’t been mentioned, but wanted to let all you failed glue folks know that E6000 is the glue of the gods.
Metal, wood, plastic, you name it, it glues it. You can get it at Wal-Mart in the craft section, or any hobby store.
Oh yeah?
I have need of a glue that can bond polypropylene to Nylon. If E6000 can do it, I’ll give it Godly status, if not, it’s just a minor deity.
You can NOT believe how hard it is to find something that will stick these two materials together…