This demonstration may not seem very impressive to us, but in the Slinky Continuum, it’s totally convincing.
I have always had a preverse desire to buy these. I dunno why, it just amuses me.
Along the same lines, the egg poacher/toaster so you can make an Egg McMuffin sandwich at home.
Nothing can be as bad as Chia Pets.
Except maybe the vibrating cat litter scooper.
Now you take that back, AskNott.
Darn it, that was my nominee.
Chill them in ice water for a couple of minutes to make the egg shrink and pull away from the inside of the shell. Roll the egg around to totally fragment the shell. Then either use an overpriced machine to blow the eggshell off and then take the time to clean it, or, you know just peel it off, because it comes off in a snap at that point, anyway.
Actually, I have a better one, now that I think of it – also (surprise!) only available through “TV offers.” The hinged paint-brush for edge-painting around corners. Even in the commercial, the only apparent difference from a cheaper, ordinary paintbrush is that it flops around like a freshly-landed trout, slapping paint around indiscriminately and making a bloody mess. Who buys these? 
In the field of cosmological quackery, I present the Rectilineator . It was designed to proveThat the Earth Is Hollow.
Speaking of hard-boiled eggs . . .
I have a gadget that I bought sometime in the '70s: it’s a little plastic press that transforms hard-boiled eggs from egg-shaped to cubical. I guess you can store them more efficiently that way.
Hey now… I use the Magic Bullet with dedicated regularity! Also, in my opinion, they could replicate the product and simply rename it “Experimental Smoothie Hangover Reducer” and it might still sell.
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I’ve seen those in Hotels, I can’t imagine being Anal Enough to want one for the home.
I remember those, they even showed Howard Cunningham buying one on Happy Days.
Sorry gigi, just saw your post, I still think it would be very anal. You can get Rubber maid dispenser for less than $19.99, maybe you should look for them.
(They don’t look like a petting zoo feed dispenser however)
If you get a Chia, go ahead and grow it. Cats will eat the Chia herb to help their diet. If you don’t have cats, it is truly useless and should only be a gag gift.
My nominee: There was a device in the 70’s being hawked for a short time to open the bottom of a ketchup bottle so we could end the Problem of the ages.
Wasted Ketchup
That’s all I remember about it except that even as a 10 year old I thought it was an incredible stupid concept.
Jim
Imagine opening somebody’s fridge and finding a wall of egg! A quivery one!
From a typical seven year old: “And it’s like a big hollow drum that makes this cool racket when you ride it around!”
The “Beeping Wallet”, hey? Sounds similar to what you’d be exclaiming after sitting with the thing for five minutes while your restaurant server is off with your card …
…the URL of which is apparently a matter of some national secrecy. patent.gov doesn’t work, patents.gov doesn’t work, uspatent.gov doesn’t work, uspo.gov doesn’t work. I guess it’s important to keep curious rubberneckers away from details of our precious Letters Patent.
Just in case I ever do make it over there, is there an easy way to find out how many U.S. Patents mention God?
It’s the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office! That’ll learn 'em.
http://www.uspto.gov/main/patents.htm is the patents page.
As is proper gummint web design, there is a pritty red-white-and-blue banner overlying approximately 40,926 closely written links. One of these should take me to the patent database, or a patent database, or something to do with the patent database.
I remember some kind of device designed to cut the tops off of old bottles to turn them into folk-art drinking glasses.
Here’s the URL for Scholfield’s “Pedagogical Device”.:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=pall&s1=1087186.WKU.&OS=PN/1087186&RS=PN/1087186
“When teaching natural theology in schools, which is that part of theological science that treats of those evidences of the existence and attributes of the Supreme Being, that are found in natural science, it is desirable to illustrate certain of these evidences by means of schematic mechanical devices.”
You’ll have to download their software to get the images, since it’s pre-1976, But it’s worth it.
The Quick Search page is:
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/
The Main Page is:
If you want to find post-1976 patents that mention “God”, use the Boolean search feature. But you’ll have to wade through a lot of Godfreys and the like. You might have better luck with “Supreme Being”
I seem to recall a device to hook to a telephone to make a light blink when it rang. This to let deaf people know when there was a call. My girlfriend of the time said “That’s a great idea!”. I said “So what happens then? They pick up the phone and…what? They can’t hear the other person.”
Her:" Ummm, oh yeah"
I never understood that one.
I’ve seen these in action, it is not for a standard Telephone but a Telex? machine.
The call comes through in writing.
Jim
Every heard of TTY?
The point is, the device silently informs you the phone is ringing. I even thought of getting one so I didn’t have to hear the phone ringing constantly, but could still tell when someone was calling.