And You Thought TIES Were Bad! 9 of the WORST Inventions Ever

We all know ties are the traditional (if not always most wanted) Father's Day gift. On the upside, at least your offspring (probably) aren’t planning to give you any of these for your special day. Here are nine of the worst inventions ever, as chosen by TIME magazine. If you do find one of these “gifts” accompanying your Father's Day breakfast, there's still a bright side: Military school is always an option! 

1.     Nintendo Virtual Boy

Nintendo is best known for its Nintendo Entertainment System and Wii platforms, as well as the card game Pokémon and its various spinoffs. The electronic gaming giant isn’t exactly renowned for putting out stinkers, but the 25-year-old Virtual Boy is definitely one of Nintendo’s most reviled creations. Marking one of the first serious attempts to create an immersive VR gaming platform similar to Oculus Rift, the Virtual Boy was released in 1995. However, a combination of poor marketing, infantile 32-bit graphics technology which simply wasn’t up to the job of emulating a true virtual reality environment and a clunky viewer which most closely resembles a Goliath Viewmaster perched atop a tripod doomed the Virtual Boy to be an expensive boondoggle and perennial addition to “Worst Of” lists for everything from gaming-centric publications to general ribaldry. Unless your dad is an avid vintage game system collector, better take a miss on this one and pick him up an NES Classic instead. 

2.      Clippy

Of all the virtual assistants out there, Microsoft’s Clippit, more popularly known as “Clippy,” is one of the most hated. The character was the brainchild of Melinda French (later Melinda Gates). User polls consistently rank Clippy as one of the worst Microsoft features ever. This animated paperclip, bearing a smirking leer and Groucho Marx-inspired eyebrows which seemed to marry condescension and menace, was a direct descendant of Bill Gates’ personal computer environment baby, Microsoft Bob, and the undisputed heavyweight champion of the inane question. One much-lamented example was, “It looks like you’re writing a letter. Do you need some help with that?” Consumers, especially those working with Word, despised Clippy so hard that the software Titan ultimately pulled the socially maladjusted "assistant" from all versions of their software from 2008 onward.

Despite Clippy’s spectacular failure as an anthropomorphized AI assistant, Microsoft has shown an ability to laugh at its own missteps, lampooning and exponentially increasing Clippy’s perceived creep factor. A 2001 series of short animated film ads for Microsoft XP featuring Clippy as one of the unavailable features has the character voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, whom you probably best remember as the voice of Jafar’s pet parrot/partner in crime Iago in Disney’s 1993 movie Aladdin, playing alongside Robin Williams as the Genie. If there’s a blessing to be taken away from this, at least Clippy is unlikely to pop up on your computer the next time you’re working on a report for work. (Unless your kids are computer programming geniuses with an evil streak, in which case you probably have more pressing concerns than an annoying would-be assistant.)

3.        Hair in a Can

If you had insomnia in the mid-90s to late 00s, chances are good that you saw at least one overhyped infomercial for some variant of Hair in a Can. This aerosolized liquid was supposed to adhere to hair follicles, covering and concealing bald spots and thinning hair for both men and women. Despite the fact Hair in a Can and all its knockoffs and descendants are basically just toned-down spray paint with results which fool no one within social distance (not to be confused with social distancing) and utterly fail to mimic the feel of real human hair, variants of Hair in a Can continue nevertheless to be pitched by a variety of TV personalities, including inventor and marketing genius Ron Popeil. 

4.     HeadOn

If you’re prone to headaches, HeadOn claimed to have the cure. Looking like a Chapstick with the approximate dimensions of a can of Red Bull and contents that look like they should be applied to the underarms, HeadOn was intended to be applied directly to the forehead. However, the scientific community says HeadOn’s claims are at best grossly exaggerated and at worst wholly fictitious unless you count the placebo effect. In addition, HeadOn’s advertising campaign is frequently cited as one of the most annoying ever to see daylight, and is more likely to give you a headache than offer the means to take it away.

Unfortunately, kids old enough to earn their own spending money but not old enough to understand hyperbole or the concept of checking claims may pick you up some of this in hopes it will help. In this case, at least we can truly say it’s the thought that counts…? 

5.     Hula Chair

Also known as the Hawaii Chair, a slight I’m pretty sure residents of the Aloha State have not yet forgiven, the Hula Chair comes in muscle-powered and electric versions. This recumbent flop claims to combine the benefits of hula-hooping, which is a legitimate form of ab-sculpting exercise, with sitting, which is, well—not. The concept is interesting, but the actual results fail to impress, and the $80-$150+ price point would buy a lot of steak or swordfish for a delicious Father’s Day dinner. If you find this in your office on Father’s Day, you might want to have your kids take a lap or two around the house. Maybe even have them mow the lawn or trim up the tree branches while they’re at it.

6.     Phone Fingers

Designed and intended to prevent leaving oils and fingerprints on a smart phone screen, Phone Fingers look a bit like condoms the Addams Family’s Thing might wear—and they fit on your finger the same way. Phone Fingers were supposed to prevent fingerprints and smudges on your phone screen caused by the oils in your hand. However, due to the uncomfortably snug fit and weird look and feel of Phone Fingers, the idea never really took off and Phone Fingers appear to have become largely a ghostly imprint on the Internet. Unless you’re really hardcore about finding and collecting weird stuff with no apparent practical use, and willing to delve into the deepest, darkest depths of the Internet to find them, the odds of one of these showing up next to your cell phone are very slim. Of course, if your kids have the sort of monolithic diehard determination required to find you the most useless things possible for your curio collection as a Father’s Day gift, the pranks you can play using Phone Fingers are really only limited by your own imagination!

7.         :CueCat

Unlike most of the inventions we’ve examined to this point, the oddly adorable :CueCat [sic] was actually based off a solid concept: a barcode scanner which works more or less the same way QR scanner apps for your phone do today. The company which created :CueCat literally gave these feline-shaped scanners away gratis as a promotional gimmick to encourage PC users to scan barcodes embedded in ads and print publications, which would then allow access to special insider information and marketing promotions. However, the idea failed to capture the imagination of the purchasing public for a number of reasons, including the fact the :CueCat had to be plugged into a PC to work at all. The review penned by Walt Mossberg for the Wall Street Journal was particularly savage, saying, “On the first standard, convenience, :CueCat fails miserably,” before going on to mock the very idea that people would be reading newspapers or magazines in front of their laptops as “unnatural and ridiculous.” But if you’re a collector of Web-related oddities, this one-trick kitty is actually a fairly cool addition with a surprisingly high potential collectible value given its initial price point of nada and the relative ease which with your kids can find one on E-bay.

8.     Baby Cage

As a father myself, I can (sort of) understand the allure of the baby cage, even if I don’t condone the practice. Patented in 1922, this scary-looking wire and metal contraption was designed to allow city-dwelling nannies and parents needing additional space to let their tiny charges get some fresh air—by literally hanging the cage off a window ledge with little Jimmy or Suzie inside! The baby cage’s popularity was brief and soon dwindled, which is probably just as well considering child psychotherapy wouldn’t come into its own for almost 30 years after the baby cage’s initial patenting. However, shockingly, no physical injuries or deaths were ever reported from the use of a baby cage—although one has to wonder how many children who were subjected to a baby cage ended up with crippling acrophobia or agoraphobia as a direct result of their use.  

9.     Shutter Shades

Also known as Venetian blind sunglasses and louvered shades, the science behind this supremely weird-looking eyewear actually holds up—sort of. Instead of smoked or colored lenses, shutter shades use a series of slits to attenuate the amount of light passing though the lenses and into the eyes of the wearer, on the same principle as the snow goggles worn by indigenous hunters on the Arctic tundra. First popularized in eye-searing DayGlo colors by World Wrestling Federation superstar “Macho Man” Randy Savage, the shutter shades were a brief trend in the 1980s which quickly faded into obscurity outside niche cultures such as hipsters and “retroids.” Recently, though, the shutter shades are making a comeback due to Kanye West, which means your fashion-forward Mini-Mes may just pick up on these as the “perfect(?)” Father’s Day present. Should you suddenly find yourself owning a pair courtesy of your budding fashionistas, shutter shades should definitely not be worn while driving!

About the Author

John Rizvi is a Registered and Board Certified Patent Attorney, Adjunct Professor of Intellectual Property Law, best-selling author, and featured speaker on topics of interest to inventors and entrepreneurs (including TEDx).

His books include "Escaping the Gray" and "Think and Grow Rich for Inventors" and have won critical acclaim including an endorsement from Kevin Harrington, one of the original sharks on the hit TV show - Shark Tank, responsible for the successful launch of over 500 products resulting in more than $5 billion in sales worldwide. You can learn more about Professor Rizvi his patent law practice at www.ThePatentProfessor.com

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