Oh, I forgot gadget watches:
One of the first “trick” watches that came out was the one that could play Pac Man. It was horrible, slow, and physically painful to play.
I also got one of those early calculator watches. Small buttons aside, who really needs a calculator (for school) that only does the basic 4 functions?
And that’s the issue - there are people who store stuff in the oven and think to check, and then there are people who wouldn’t conceive of using the oven as storage space and thus never even think of such things. The first time I heard of someone who stored stuff in the oven (especially because some of it could be ruined by it being turned on), it was like someone told me they were storing their goldfish in the toilet bowl. 
Indirect story, I suppose – my sister lurves QVC, and has probably spent a fortune on that junk; she’s also managed to convince my otherwise sensible mother that QVC is the be-all and end-all of the shopping experience.
Consequently my mother has loads of broken or tacky junk hidden out in the garage or at the bottom of dresser drawers. The biggest mistake she made was letting my sister talk her into buying luggage from there – my mom was getting older, and really wanted a nice wheeled suitcase. I made some suggestions because I divide my time between the East Coast and the UK over the past 20 years, so I have some experience with planes, luggage, and people actively trying to destroy it.
Nope – she ignored my suggestions and went with my sister, who, at that time, had never traveled out of state except down to the beach, and ‘luggage’ for her was throwing stuff into shopping bags and tossing them into the back of her car.
So my mom went ahead and bought the QVC suitcase, packed it all up, and flew to Florida from Philly with it; at the other end, the bag came off the luggage conveyor with all four of its wheels broken or broken off, and the cheap case itself smashed to bits. She had to lug it through the airport, and ended up borrowing a case from her friends down there to get back.
She and my sister still buy stuff from QVC, and the cycle continues.
As for the oven thing: it is infuriating to have someone (my dad) watch you pre-heat an oven to a high temp, and then laugh as you go to put in your own stuff, to discover the oven is packed with (now 450F) cooking pans, sauce pans, etc – my parents would stuff all of these leftover saucepans, pots, cooky sheets, etc into the oven because they had no other place to put them. My dad watched me do it, then call me stupid when I had to carefully remove baking hot cookware to put our meal into the oven. (I never thought to look because when I was growing up, my parents never used the oven as extra cookware storage).
However, at least that stuff was made to get hot – when I was younger than that, I stayed at a friend’s apt while we were both in grad school, and we’d been taking turns cooking supper over the course of the week, and one of my nights, I thought it would be nice to have something baked – DO look in strange ovens, kids, because my friend stored her textbooks and papers in her oven.
My watch would reset if all the buttons on the front were pushed at the same time. (Wouldn’t you?) The guy with the locker next to me discovered this. Thought it was funny as hell. He wondered why I socked him HARD in the arm. I got tired of setting it every time I saw the guy.
The Magic Bullet - I loved the infomercials, especially the badly-dubbed european versions, so I bought one on a whim.
We knew it was likely to be useful, and sure enough it was - just turned everything into mush, or the blades got clogged.
Sold it to a colleague at work for almost what we paid for it though, she wanted it for smoothies so mush was ideal for her!
Mr Frosty
Heh, I thought you were talking about the sex toy. “Badly-dubbed European [infomercial]” for it seemed rather intriguing… and then ouch :eek:
I was almost going to add that I got the idea on my honeymoon in Italy 
I like retro electronics too. Got one of those, but sadly no cable so I’m stuck with the same crappy songs on it when I bought it at the thrift store. 2 years of looking and still no cable (and I’m one of those buy it for 25 cents at Goodwill types, no eBay for something this insignificant). Frudnk.
We bought our 1998 Corvette (not new) in 1998…Loaded up the CD changer. It’s still got the same 12 freeking discs in it. It’s like a time capsule back to 1989.
My rule of thumb is that if is (or would have been) advertised on late night TV (Chia Pets, that pasta cooker), or on the back page of a comic book (Sea Monkeys or XRay Specs), then it’s likely to disappoint. SOME products that are advertised on TV are actually pretty good. If the ad is on at 3 AM, though, the product is generally pretty worthless. And this includes lawyers.
Yes! I was so excited!
It took forever, and mine started slipping, so I had to put a rubber band around the canister, and then we had no rubber bands…
I don’t think I ever fully tumbled a rock 
When I was a kid–maybe seven–there was this awesome rocking horse in a store window. Bright red mane, blue eyes, and gold with purple spots. Many, you should have seen her when the sun hit. I thought if I had it, I’d have everything a kid could possibly want.
Expensive though. Damn expensive. Little did I know, folks skimped on groceries and my dad put in tons of overtime. They finally scrimped enough to get her for me, and surprised me on x-mas morning.
Ah, what a morning! But elation quickly turned to dismay as from the first moment it broke in two.
So much for youthful optimism.
But it did teach me an important lesson: make sure you save the receipt.
I wanted so badly to be able to draw things when I was a kid. Bought this device (yeah, advertised in the back pages of a comic book, dammit) that was supposed to superimpose the image of whatever’s off in front of you onto the paper when you look down at it, so that you could see your subject and your sketch at the same time.
Well yeah except that the focal distance was totally incompatible unless you only drew items that were 18 inches away from your nose.
Then in more recent times, the Sharp Wizard. 1989’s version of the Palm Pilot. As with Rhythmdvl, I had no overall complaint with the toy but man oh man I wish I’d paid a shitload more attention to what the hell I did with the receipt. It quit working less than a month after I bought it and it was not inexpensive.
Age 9 or so - 1972…back of a comic book…
Own Your Own Giant Frankenstein Monster!
7 feet tall! Scare your friends!
4 bucks? Hells yeah, I got 4 bucks!
Weeks later, it came. In a tube. It was a freaking poster!
Bastiges!
My buddy fell for a worse - or better- one.
“Sleep with Raquel Welch Every Night - Guaranteed!”
He got a plastic inflatable pillow with a picture of RW silkscreened on it.
And the shocking joy buzzer? It doesn’t shock ANYONE!
Mexican Jumping beans at the checkout counter at K-Mart? Sweet!
Until you find they just roll around for a week, then hatch or whatever.
Of course anyone who expects **real **X-Ray specs is just an ijit.
I mean, come on!
Ventriloquism? Learn to throw your voice? I’m in.
For my hard-earned cash, I got some little oval/disk thing wrapped with a rubber band. You’re supposed to hold it in your mouth and your voice comes out of the dishwasher or the dog or whatever. Not.
Man, I’m just now realizing what a disappointing childhood I had!
Dammit!
My Wife decided she wanted a pool. Ok anything to make you happy dear 
She and my son said they would clean it once a week. It was one of the smaller above ground kind. Not the one with the inflatable ring but the kind you actually have to work to install. They swam in it maybe 20 times then decided to stop cleaning it. So naturally I did’nt want all my hard instalation work to go to waste. So I started cleaning it. Folks DO NOT get a pool if you have a live oak tree in your back yard. I had to clean that damned pool EVERYDAY otherwise, it would turn green…one day…sheeeesh. I did enjoy renting the bulldozer to obliterate it though
I ordered that same package! Got the instructions and everything… but no voice donut. That was disappointing.
Voice donuts … mmmmmmmmmm
That robot arm thing from radio shack.
I got that Robot Arm thing from the SDMB store. Terrible. Crappy job washing the dishes. Hardly cleaned the cat box. Wouldn’t wash windows. Finally gave up and exchanged it for one of those cool mugs.
