The 50 Worst Inventions

BanguIzai SG

From the zany to the dangerous to the just plain dumb, here is TIME's list (in no particular order) of some of the world's bright ideas that just didn't work out

Segway

Give inventor Dean Kamen this: he's a master of buzz. A closely guarded secret that was supposed to change the world upon its release in 2001, the Segway never brought about its promised revolution in transportation. Though the technology is pretty cool — very expensive gyroscopes make the thing nearly impossible to tip over (though George W. Bush found a way) — the Segway's sales far underperformed vs. Kamen's predictions. It lives on as the vehicle of choice for mall cops and lazy tourists, but the Segway's best contribution might be as the vehicle of choice for failed magician Gob Bluth in Arrested Development.

New Coke

Marketers should have known — don't mess with consumers' sentimental attachment to a product. Especially when it's 99-year-old Coca-Cola. The "newer, sweeter" version, introduced April 23, 1985, succeeded in blind taste tests but flopped in the real world. Phone calls, letters and rants from Coke die-hards flooded in, and just three months after its debut, New Coke was removed, and the word Classic was added to all Coke cans and bottles to assure consumers they were getting their first love.

Clippy

"It looks like you're writing a letter. Would you like help?" No question drew more ire from Microsoft Office users than Clippy's snappy opener. The assumption-prone office assistant made its debut in Microsoft Office 97 as an acrobatic virtual paper clip ready to help complete any task. The only problem was that Clippy had trouble holding its tongue. As soon as the word Dear hit the page, it burst into letter-writing mode, ready to help structure a person's most private thoughts. Clippy no longer stars in a lead role for the word-processing program, mainly because of its obsession with bouncing on users' documents and the fact that, well, nobody seems to write letters anymore.

Agent Orange

A potent herbicide used from 1961 to 1971 in the Vietnam War, Agent Orange was designed to cut through Vietnam's thick canopy of foliage to reveal enemy troops beneath. While it succeeded, the price was high: exposure proved deadly to humans, causing cancers, birth defects and a slew of other disorders. Some 21 million gallons of it were dumped on Vietnam, resulting in hundreds of thousands of injuries and birth defects to Vietnamese citizens. U.S. veterans faced exposure too; they received a $180 million settlement from its manufacturers in 1984.

CueCat

Released at the height of the tech boom in the late 1990s, the CueCat was a massively expensive failure. Millions of the cat-shaped bar-code scanners were produced and shipped for free across the U.S., in hopes that people would use them to scan specially marked bar codes to visit Internet sites. (How this was easier than a typing a link, the company never did answer.) Despite a much ballyhooed launch, with CueCat codes printed in Wired and BusinessWeek, consumers never got into the idea of reading their magazines next to a wired cat-shaped scanner, and the CueCat became little more than a high-tech paperweight.

Subprime Mortgages

The flimsy piece of foundation that brought the U.S. economy tumbling into recession, subprime mortgages are risky loans given to people with shaky credit histories. When interest rates dipped in 2004, banks began granting mortgages to people who really, really shouldn't have had them. Even worse, many were structured adjustable-rate mortgages, with interest rates that climbed after the first few years. The result was a wave of foreclosures and banks with a lot of bad loans on their books. In short, financial catastrophe.

Crinoline

Worn in combination with the corset, the crinoline was fashion at its most uncomfortable. A relic of the Victorian era, crinolines occasionally measured some six feet across, making simple daily tasks like, you know, walking through doors challenging. Heels look downright practical by comparison.

Nintendo Virtual Boy

The Virtual Boy will go down as Nintendo's shortest-lived system, staying on the market for just six months in 1995 before its mercy killing. The system consisted of bulky, bright red headgear that completely obscured a gamer's vision as he tried to play games rendered in rudimentary 3-D graphics. It was expensive (retailing at $180) and came with a limited slate of games (only 14 were ever available in the U.S.) Nintendo decided to focus its efforts on the far more successful and traditional Nintendo 64 system, relegating the Virtual Boy to the recycling bin.

Farmville

Blast you, Farmville. The most addictive of Facebook games is hardly even a game — it's more a series of mindless chores on a digital farm, requiring the endless clicking of a mouse to plant and harvest crops. And yet Zynga, the evil genius behind this bizarre digital addiction, says more than 10% of Americans have logged in to create online homesteads. How many hours of lost productivity does that translate to? Tough to guess. But for me, personally, at least dozens. Sorry, TIME.

Hydrogenated Oils

The health scourge of the 2000s, trans fats were invented for a practical purpose. In the late 1800s, people began adding hydrogen to oils like vegetable oil to increase the shelf life of foods. But modern studies found that the combination, which does not occur naturally, had unforeseen health consequences, contributing to a rise in bad cholesterol and increasing the risk of heart disease. Manufacturers like McDonald's raced to remove trans fats from their foods, and in 2006, food manufacturers in the U.S. were required to label the amount of trans fats included in their products.

Honegar

Invented in 1959 by Dr. DeForest C. Jarvis, Honegar is exactly what it sounds like: a mix of equal parts honey and apple-cider vinegar. Jarvis drew his inspiration from the drinking habits of rural Vermont farmers, who he believed to be particularly healthy. While the unpalatable recipe failed to catch on (though there are modern-day devotees), the science may not be all bad: both honey and apple-cider vinegar contain a slew of important antioxidants and are folk treatments for ailments like arthritis.

Hydrogen Blimps

When the Hindenburg was designed in 1931, its makers made the fateful choice to use hydrogen instead of helium to set the blimp aloft. Hydrogen was cheaper and more readily available but had the nasty side effect of being highly flammable. That proved to be a problem in 1937, when the famed blimp caught fire and crashed in just 36 seconds, spelling the end to the hydrogen blimp. Most current blimps, including the famous Goodyear ones, are powered by far less volatile helium.

Hair in a Can

Cheese, Spam, sardines — nothing really good has ever come from a can. Hair is no exception. Hyped breathlessly on off-hour infomercials, spray-on hair is supposed to cover up bald spots. In practice, the can emits a fine powder that ends up looking a little better than if you had used a can of spray paint. If nothing else, it's evidence that there's definitely something to be said for growing old with dignity.

DDT

DDT was supposed to be the magic bullet vs. the scourge of insect-borne diseases like malaria. Discovered in 1873, DDT (short for the less catchy dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) wasn't used widely until 1939, when Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Muller noted its effectiveness as a pesticide during World War II, a discovery that earned him a Nobel Prize in 1948. After the war, use exploded: from 1942 to 1972, some 1.35 billion lb. of DDT were used in the U.S.

But absent from the DDT mania was consideration of the environmental effects of dumping millions of pounds of potent pesticides each year. Rachel Carson's seminal 1962 environmental tract Silent Spring was the first to call attention to the nasty little fact that DDT produced fertility and neurological problems in humans and accumulated up the food chain in wildlife, poisoning birds. Use of the compound plummeted, and in 1972, DDT was banned in the U.S. entirely.

Auto-Tune

It's a technology that can make bad singers sound good and really bad singers (like T-Pain, pictured here) sound like robots. And it gives singers who sound like Kanye West or Cher the misplaced confidence that they too can croon. Thanks a lot, computers.

Red Dye No. 2

Among the most ubiquitous food colorings in the 1970s, Red Dye No. 2 was pulled from the market in 1976 after Soviet scientists claimed that tests showed a link between the substance and cancer. Was the panic overblown? Probably — no one ever succumbed to a red-dye disease. But the fact that the scare pulled red M&Ms from bags for a decade is enough for the substance to make this list.

Ford Pinto

The 1971 model is, hands down, one of the worst cars of all time. That's what happens when an automobile has the nasty tendency to literally explode when involved in a rear-end collision. Adding insult to injury was the infamous memo Ford wrote after learning about the problem, arguing it'd be cheaper to pay settlements to victims than to fix the Pinto.

Parachute Jacket

Honestly, you can probably guess where this is going. Down. Fast. Designed in 1912 by German inventor Franz Reichelt, the parachute jacket had a high-profile unveiling when Reichelt wore one for a jump from the Eiffel Tower. It didn't deploy. Reichelt died.

Betamax

Betamax wasn't so much a bad product as a lesson in marketing gone awry. The also-ran to VHS in the video-format wars, Betamax was pushed by Sony as a proprietary format in 1975 before it was completely ready, in a race to get manufacturers on board. But while Betamax could record up to an hour of video, VHS could record up to two hours. That slight advantage was enough for VHS to gain a foothold in the market, one it never relinquished. Betamax became a footnote.

Baby Cage

In the 1930s, London nannies lacking space for their young ones resorted to the baby cage. It's exactly what it sounds like: a creepy wire contraption, patented in the U.S. in 1922, that lets you claim that space outside your city window for your infant. Risky? Maybe, but so convenient. How sweet; how sick.

Tanning Beds

It's no secret that overexposure to UV rays — either natural sunshine or manufactured — produces negative effects. In fact, about 90% of skin cancer incidents are the direct result of UV radiation. The role of tanning beds remains key. Introduced in the U.S. in the 1970s, they've continued growing in popularity, especially among teens, despite well-publicized risks. An April 2010 study showed for the first time that indoor tanners specifically may form dependencies in the same way that drugs and alcohol do.

Crocs

It doesn't matter how popular they are, they're pretty ugly. Crocs, introduced in 2002, mostly take the form of rubber clogs but have been transformed into high heels and loafers. Their manufacturing company announced on April 26, 2010, that it would also start making ballet flats. "If we make it a little bit more stylish, then we start to appeal to a larger audience," said the company's CEO. Which means they just might be attractive enough to do your laundry in.

Hula Chair

Is it an amusement-park ride or a workout device? The Hula Chair attempts to create the ab-workout sensation of using a hula hoop (actual exercise) while sitting down (generally not considered exercise). Giving your abs a workout while filing papers is a nice idea, but trying to focus while your lower half is throttling around like this is absurd and, more to the point, oddly erotic. Oh, and the chair costs upwards of $250.

Foursquare

When broadcasting your every thought via Facebook and Twitter isn't enough, there's Foursquare, the next generation of creepy social networking. Instead of saying where you are, you can use your phone's GPS to broadcast the address. Just another tool tapping into a generation of narcissism, with which you can earn badges for checking into your local Starbucks more than anyone else. While coupons eventually come along as bonus incentive, Foursquare simply builds another layer onto a generation living virtually. Introduced in 2009, the site has only a million users — a drop in the bucket compared with Facebook, expected to soon reach 500 million. But like most social-networking phenomena, its usage is only growing.

Pop-Up Ads

Blinking ads, flashing banner ads, singing ads. Escaping advertising was already a hopeless endeavor online in the early 2000s when Web browsers introduced pop-up ads, an almost unavoidable trick by websites to generate revenue. Hundreds of angry Facebook groups have been created to deride pop-up ads. Though pop-up blockers were eventually created, you still never know when you're going to click on a link that will bring a flurry of pop-up ads or freeze the computer screen altogether.

Phone Fingers

With the iPhone, some people really do mind fingerprints. One Austrian company found a novel solution for this present-day quandary: cover your digits with latex accessories known as Phone Fingers. For less that €10 — a relative bargain, given the euro's latest swoon — consumers could roam the streets with pink, white, blue or black fingers. The only problem for buyers was getting the fingers on and off with any semblance of ease. The company squelched those worries with a printable size chart designed to help buyers estimate their "finger size." Just put your finger on the piece of paper, and presto, you're a large. Yeah, I need my iPhone for, well, everything but this.

CFCs

Short for chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs are nasty chemical compounds that wreak havoc on the environment. Used in refrigeration units and aerosol cans, CFCs combine with atmospheric ozone, neutralizing the molecular compound and weakening the ozone layer, an important environmental barrier that protects the earth's surface from ultraviolet radiation from the sun. While increased regulation since the 1970s has diminished their use, CFCs can endure in the atmosphere for nearly a century, making this a very long-lived mistake.

Plastic Grocery Bags

Touted as a convenient and cheap alternative to paper bags, plastic grocery bags gained acceptance in the late 1970s and now meet 80% of retailers' bagging needs. They've saved millions of trees but come with equally bad consequences: more than 500 million are used and discarded each year, millions of which never make it to a landfill and fall as litter. And depending on the plastic used in production, those bags may take several hundred years to decompose. The solution? Recycle, or better yet, skip both paper and plastic and bring a reusable bag of your own.

Bumpit

Hey, ladies. Disappointed because your skull lacks an unnatural ridge? The Bumpit is here to help! Informercials didn't go quite like that, but this "hair-volumizing insert" is about as lame. Likely celebrity practitioners? Snookie from Jersey Shore, and allegedly even Sarah Palin. Judge for yourself.

Electric Facial Mask

For those who want to look like a serial killer and seem younger at the same time. Seriously, just watch this 1999 infomercial. It's terrifying.

Sony CD Copy Protection

In the days before iTunes, record labels tried all sorts of wacky protections to stop people from pirating music. The dumbest innovation belonged to Sony, which hard-coded software into CDs in 2002 to prevent listeners from copying tracks to a computer. The only problem? The software could be easily defeated by using a permanent marker to draw a border along the edge of a disk, rendering the expensive barrier useless. Good luck banning markers, Sony.

Venetian-Blind Sunglasses

Between his awful singing, awful telethon moments and awful award-show moments, there's a case for Kanye West's personal inclusion on this list. Instead, we'll simply blame him for repopularizing the most awful sunglasses ever. A trend in the '80s, these slatted sunglasses were dead and buried until West sported them in his 2007 music video for "Stronger," introducing a new generation of style morons to an utterly pointless and functionless accessory.

Pet Spa

It's a washer and dryer — for your pet. Covered hilariously by CBS News in 2004, Pet Spa was a hands-free way to wash your cat or dog. Luckily for them, most people are still doing it the old-fashioned way.

Pontiac Aztek

It's not the car — it's the aesthetics. Though it was launched in 2001 with the tagline "Quite possibly the most versatile vehicle on the planet," its drivers had a different take: the Aztek was quite possibly the ugliest vehicle on the planet. Pontiac kept the car around until finally mercy killing it in 2005, but this was one idea that should have been left buried in the jungle.

Snuggie for Dogs

We can understand the functionality of the Snuggie. It makes sense that you'd want your arms to stay warm yet still be able to grab the remote or a soda. But a dog Snuggie? While the product's ad whines that dogs' traditional sweaters "pull! And they're tight!," we draw the line. Dogs simply do not need Snuggies.

Mizar Flying Car

The flying car isn't purely science fiction. In the 1940s, inventors managed to fly a car from California to Ohio, although the model never took off because of cost and technical limitations. But in 1973, an inventor named Henry Smolinski tried to succeed where others failed by strapping the wings and tail from a Cessna aircraft to, of all cars, a Ford Pinto. During a test flight in California, the Pinto broke free, plummeting to earth and killing Smolinski and his passenger. Some things are better left to the movies.

Asbestos

At first glance, asbestos appears to be a construction worker's confidant. It is a versatile mineral fiber that excels at absorption and can withstand the harshness of heat. But when floor tiles or roof shingles need to be repaired or replaced, asbestos morphs into a homeowner's headache. Those same strong fibers that drive a building's start can turn nasty during remodeling or demolition stages. Inhaling the toxic particles in that state causes asbestosis — a condition instigated by fibrosis in the lungs, sparking chest pain, shortness of breath, nail abnormalities, clubbing of fingers and other complications. With those factors in mind, the EPA issued a ruling on July 12, 1989, banning most asbestos-containing products. But two years later, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned that decision, leaving only some products on the banned list: flooring felt, rollboard and corrugated, commercial and specialty paper. When a substance makes its way into the federal government's Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry, something was wrong to begin with.

Olestra

When it comes to nutrition, what better equation could there be than zero calories, zero grams of cholesterol and zero grams of fat? In January 1996, the FDA approved olestra as a food additive. Cut out the unhealthy cooking oil. Shred the package of shortening. Bury the stick of butter. Frito-Lay was among the first companies to jump on board, introducing its WOW! division of potato chips in 1998 to claim fat-free stomach satisfaction. But olestra proved to be a greedy chemical. It not only removed unwanted fat from foods but also negated the body's ability to absorb essential vitamins. Side effects included cramps, gas and loose bowels, turning fat-free French fries into a foiled business fad. The FDA has kept olestra as a legal food additive to this day, though, leaving its health implications in the hands of individual consumers.

Comfort Wipe

It's no wonder the late, great Billy Mays never signed on to deliver this infomercial. In an ever changing landscape of home products, toilet paper remained relatively stable. Seth Wheeler is credited with first patenting rolled, perforated bathroom tissue in the late 19th century. But the makers of the Comfort Wipe disagreed with the 100-plus years of toilet-paper success. Shaking up the sanitation sector, TeleBrands introduced an extension arm and holder to help individuals spooked by coming into contact with a soiled piece. The clean tissue attached itself to a wand that added up to 18 inches of reach, and a release button at the end of the handle took care of the rest. Apparently, the ad's "don't be embarrassed" tag applied more to TeleBrands than to consumers, as the company discontinued the product in June 2009 before it was ever brought to the market. Wipe, flush, match — toilet paper.

Fake Ponytails

Really, this entry could be for hairpieces in general, but the fake ponytail is particularly egregious. Doesn't matter how much money you spend on it — everyone can tell it's fake. (Well, at least that it isn't yours. Some are produced with real human hair.) Bonus points for bad taste if the fake ponytail is worn by a man.

HeadOn

Looking like ChapStick for the forehead, HeadOn claims to relieve headaches without your having to pop any pills. In fact, its commercial — featuring the most annoying voice-over ever (seriously, just watch) — became more successful than the product itself. The Better Business Bureau says HeadOn "failed to provide any reliable testing to support its claims." Many doctors agreed there's no scientific basis that it actually cures headaches, although the company claims there's a homeopathic benefit. Still, we think the HeadOn commercials are more likely to prompt a headache than to cure one.

Pay Toilets

Time is money. But should that adage apply to toilets? In the mid-1970s, a growing consensus of Americans looked to flush the charges attached to public restrooms. With the help of the Committee to End Pay Toilets in America, several large metropolitan areas, headed by Chicago, got their wish. New York City went the opposite route, waiting until January 2008 to unveil its first pay toilet, in Madison Square Park. For 25 cents, patrons were granted 15 minutes of privacy, which equals the rate of a parking meter. But the real difference came when that 15-minute time limit was up. Instead of a police officer levying a ticket, the pay toilet responded by automatically opening its doors and exposing its guest to the city lights. Next up on the buyer list? Airline companies — redefining business class, one quarter at a time.

Tamagotchis

When a child asks a parent for his or her first pet, the defense platform is a given: Are you going to feed it? Are you going to keep it clean? With Bandai toys, late-1990s children finally got their way past those basic questions with a pet that fit in their pocket. Via combinations of buttons A, B and C, Tamagotchis could be fed, changed and entertained. But just like an actual pet with a pulse, the egg-shaped device required constant care. If not, it could be dead — in less than a day. For parents looking to foster time-management skills in their children, the Tamagotchi often got the best of that battle. Mommy! Mommy!

Leaded Gasoline

Pull in to the local gas station and every pump has something in common. "Unleaded" is the new craze. For nearly six decades, gasoline companies ignored the known dangers associated with lead to get rich. Tetraethyl lead boosted the octane levels in auto fuel, but there was speculation surrounding the safety of that decision from Day One. In the Nov. 10, 1924, issue of TIME, a report showed that 35 men at the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had come down with an "occupational disease." Symptoms ranged from insomnia to low blood pressure, all at the hands of lead poisoning. The EPA completed a full phaseout of lead gasoline in 1986, ending the quest to trade steady health for steady sales.

Vibrating Ab Belt

The modern workday, fully equipped with computer log-ins and traffic logjams, lends itself to a sedentary lifestyle. But for those looking to get toned in no time, there are better options than a contraption that resembles a mild defibrillator. While its cost may be less than that of the average gym membership, the vibrating ab belt sparks muscle contractions by sending mild electrical charges into the core areas. If the purpose of exercise is to get heart-healthy, why endanger the heart? Pain is weakness leaving the body, but the vibrating ab belt is money leaving the pocket.

Spam E-mail

Few everyday offerings fall into the realm of free. E-mail accounts still make that list. But as with any freebie, there are associated costs. One of the most substantial stigmas attached to virtual mailboxes is spam e-mail. Within one folder of utter clutter exists unsolicited messages delivered to thousands of addresses. Those not smart enough to read the warning signs might befriend the fictitious Alan Lutz of twistedtails.com, offering a chance at a low mortgage rate "Because you deserve it!" Without the right protective programs in place, that decision may drastically affect the average computer's shelf life. And for those who are wise enough to ignore the jungle of junk, the process adds Web traffic to only one obsequious computer key — the delete button.

Smell-o-Vision

Forget 3-D — what audiences really want is to smell a movie. So went the thinking of Mike Todd Jr., who in 1960 funded the ill-fated Smell-o-Vision gimmick, an elaborate system that allowed a film reel to trigger the release of bottled scents that were piped to the audience in sync with pivotal moments in the movie. The only film to make use of Smell-o-Vision was 1960's Scent of Mystery, written specifically with the gimmick in mind. The results, predictably, stunk, and Smell-o-Vision was never used again.

Smile Checks

Be happy, or else. In 2009, employees of Japan's Keihin Electric Express Railway started facing morning smile checks, in which they were subjected to software that analyzed their facial expression to produce a rating of their smile on a scale of zero to 100. Not dumb enough? They also had to carry around images of their "ideal smile," as something to aspire to throughout the course of the day. :(

Microsoft Bob

Imagine a whole operating system designed around Clippy, and you get the crux of Microsoft Bob. Designed to be an easier interface for Windows 95 users, Bob envisioned your computer as his house — with you as a guest. Ever so accommodating, he'd even supply cartoon sidekicks to guide you through simple tasks. The software was expensive and overly cutesy, and it failed to compete with Apple's Macintosh, the user-friendly standard. And though Bob is long gone, he left one enduring blight on the Web: Comic Sans, perhaps the worst font of all time, was created exclusively for Bob.

Vio

Coke calls it the world's first "vibrancy drink." That's a really, really lame euphemism to get around the fact that Vio is carbonated flavored milk. The beverage giant rolled out bottles of the stuff in 2009 to test markets including New York. Shockingly, it failed to find broad appeal (although Coke is still producing it in limited quantities).