10 Bizarre Products Clearly Designed By Psychopaths
The world is full of garbage. Whether you're an environmentalist, a shopper in a big-box store, or navigating your way through an internet that tries to gulp down your money with every ad and piece of sponsored content, it's full of garbage. Not just refuse, of course, but stuff that someone makes, someone sells, someone buys, and none of us need. In the course of writing my blog The Worst Things For Sale, I've dug up thousands of individual pieces of trash, and I'd like to share a few of them with you today.
A Placenta Cookbook
Some people believe that eating the placenta after giving birth is a cure for postpartum depression or a way to get more "energy." Medical studies have disproved both of these, along with a few other health claims about the practice that have been made over the years, but it hasn't stopped people from eating their placentas. Animals will eat their placentas after giving birth, but then again, they live outside, can't use tools, and don't have Five Guys.
In an effort to cash in on this natural healing hoax / micro-trend, the author of 25 Placenta Recipes has dreamed up a multitude of ways to cook your own human tissue into tacos, loafs, and sauces. Mostly comprised of blood and connective tissue, the placenta is probably similar in taste to a blood sausage or a lump of organ meat. Except you grew it in your own body and you ate it, like a scab or a fingernail.
A Dog Window
The PetPeek is a plastic window you install in your fence to allow your dog to bark at more things, more frequently. Is this good? Some people say yes; their neighbors say no. It might be entertaining to think of a dog looking out a dog window, or to imagine that your dog will gain some pleasure or insight from seeing cars drive by. It's also entertaining to think that your silverware has a better time in the kitchen if you leave the drawer open. Neither, of course, are true.
Most disturbing of all is the manufacturer's picture, which shows the PetPeek at crotch height, subtly suggesting you "accidentally" install it there, and then, cursed by fate, stride by it slowly, or stand with your reproductive system hanging out your fence bubble. It was purely coincidental, officer. It's within my right to be nude in my yard.
iPhone Panties
There's a better way to protect your phone's button and hole, and it's called a phone case.
Synthol
If you've ever seen a weirdly bulgy man at the gym or on the street, Synthol may be to blame. It's an injectable solution (made of vegetable oil, preservative, and anesthetic) which allows someone to make their muscles look bigger. The solution is slowly absorbed by the body over time, and only sometimes fatal due to infection or accidentally hitting a vein. It can also destroy the muscle tissue it's supposed to "enhance" and is not prescribed or used by actual doctors, so it's administered by laypeople to themselves or others.
It doesn't improve muscle strength or endurance, obviously, but if your goal is to look like you're smuggling a softball under your skin instead of building physical strength through resistance, Synthol may work for you. It's not a steroid, so it doesn't come with the typical side effects or legal repercussions of anabolic steroids, although it's usually only used by people who already also take steroids.
There is an alternative, but it may take even more mental strength to carry out than jacking your shoulders and arms full of vegetable oil.
Handspresso
Making a cup of espresso in a car hurtling down a highway at 70 miles per hour is the modern American entitlement/entertainment/convenience problem in a nutshell. "But ... this is for when the car is stopped," you protest, sipping your espresso from the Handspresso unbreakable cups sold alongside the Handspresso. I see you, and I raise you "maybe the cups wouldn't have to be unbreakable if you weren't planning on getting in a wreck with them."
An Enormous Dildo
I've pixelated this item's picture, but if you can't imagine what a huge, realistic dildo would look like, it's there on the original listing (NSFW). And it's not that a dildo, or sex toys in general, are anything other than tools that help you enjoy your life. It's just that a three-foot-long, foot-across, 40-pound lump of rubber isn't gonna go anywhere or do anything for you. The only upside I see is that it's on sale (it used to cost a thousand bucks.)
The Macho Man Rap Album
Obviously a commercial flop when released, Be A Man, the first and last rap album released by Macho Man Randy Savage, exists today as a cultural artifact of mass marketing and niche celebrity culture. You can hear the meeting that generated this album. "Kids love the rap," they said, "even though it's not really music. It's just yelling and it sounds like someone's hitting a trash can. But the kids love it."
Even though this is very generously 25 percent Macho Man at the most, if you don't count guest vocals, backup singers, backing tracks, and the fact that he's audibly reading lyrics from a piece of paper, the album is stiffened by the late Macho Man's growly flat affect. It's on YouTube, if you've got 45 minutes to burn and you won't get a muscle cramp from cringing.
Just in case you think all pro wrestling rap albums are destined for the cutout bin, the rap album released by John Cena in 2005, You Can't See Me, debuted at #15 on the Billboard chart. Not that it's good, but yes, it's arguably better than Macho Man's. RIP.
Tampon Flasks
Yes, you can probably sneak some liquor into some kind of event using these. But you've got to fill the little tampon-shaped test tubes (which hold one ounce each), seal up the wrappers, and then either pour your tampon vodka into your drink or slug it straight out of the tampon. You might want to go with a regular flask if you don't want pictures of yourself online with the caption "This lady over here's eating tampons at the circus." Or "Check out the woman dipping her tampon into her Coke."
Cereal Marshmallows
When you were a kid, you probably lucked into getting marshmallow cereal every once in a while, which no doubt prompted you to think, "I wish the whole bowl was the marshmallow part." Enter the 40-pound bulk bag of cereal marshmallows, untainted by even the smallest trace of residual cereal. You could dole them out over the years -- a sprinkle in your cereal here, a dozen in your coffee there -- but let's face it, if you're buying 40 pounds of marshmallows, you're gonna eat 'em out of the bag, and you're not going to stop until they're gone or you die.
You'll be glad to know there's a diet version of this, which is ... an eight-pound bag of cereal marshmallows.
Datamancer Sojourner
Most computer keyboards clock in at $20 or $30. Not the Datamancer Sojourner, a thousand-dollar handmade steampunk keyboard handcrafted from regular keyboard parts and a brass case. The typewriter keys, which are attached to the same clicky keyboard mechanisms regular keyboards use, let you, uh ... type ... more ... steampunky?
For those who need to spend even more on a keyboard, there is The Seafarer, which is ... the same thing as the Sojourner ... but it has a map engraved on it. For that price, it had better come with Keyboard Panties.
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