The 10 Worst Fictional Products in Pop Culture History
A look back at some of the products from movies and TV that would be less than ideal in the real world.
Originally, Hill Valley scientist Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown was forced to cavort with Libyan terrorists to obtain the plutonium that sent his flux-capacitor-powered DeLorean through time. But Brown's first order of business upon arriving in the distant future of 2015 was nevertheless to pimp his quantum-leaping ride with a commercially available reactor that turns garbage into energy through nuclear fusion.
What's Wrong With It?
Safety? Where we're going, we don't need safety. If and when these blender-sized nucleosynthesizers find their way to Kmart, the last place you're going to want to install one is the rear end of your flying DeLorean, lest a common highway fender-bender result in a miniature thermonuclear meltdown in your back seat. Robert Zemeckis' prediction that Mr. Fusions will hit shelves less than eight years from now may have been premature; however, it remains more plausible than the film's 2015 Cubs World Series victory.
Buddy Bands (
Here's one request you'll never hear from a consumer: "Gee, I'd really like to be indefinitely tethered at the wrist to Dustin Diamond." 
Yet that's exactly what Zack, Screech, Kelly and the rest of Bayside High's brightest achieved when an economics assignment required them to market an original product ("The Friendship Business"). Oddly, the young entrepreneurs chose to disregard the obvious engineering genius of their "friend" Samuel "Screech" Powers, who once constructed a robot so sophisticated it was capable of pity. Hey, Zack and Slater weren't going to take their cues from a dweeb! Anyways, who needs brains when you have Ray Bans and an oversized cell phone?
What's Wrong With It?
The sheer physical awkwardness of attempting to navigate the busy hallways of Bayside while tethered at the wrist to another human being creates a disturbingly high potential for dislocated shoulders and swirly-related drownings. Furthermore, the site of young men joined at the hands would easily increase homophobia among the already ambiguous, neon-tank-top-clad young men of Bayside.
Buzz Beer (The Drew Carey Show)
Buzz Beer, a coffee-flavored microbrew concocted by Carey, has the dubious honor of being a business venture as desperate as the sitcom that spawned it would, nine seasons later, ultimately become. Years before Mr. Carey ascended Bob Barker's throne as America's foremost authority on the retail value of jet skis, his loveable crew-cut-wearing desk-jockey "Drew Carey" (not to be confused with the creepy, hooker binging, crew-cut-wearing comic Drew Carey) fixed his thick-rimmed eyes on the beer market with a revolutionary brewing process that essentially involved running a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon through a used Mr. Coffee. Surprisingly, Anheuser-Busch has yet to file for bankruptcy.
What's Wrong With It?
Coffee and beer go together like peanut butter and jelly ... if peanut butter was a powerful stimulant served piping hot at 7 a.m. and jelly was the very depressant that knocked you out in the first place the night before. This contradictory brew is comparable to infusing a refreshing glass of milk with the quenching properties of a tube of warm cookie dough. While not technically the worst thing to ever come out of Cleveland (that distinction belongs to the Browns), Buzz Beer still remains a disgrace to caffeine addicts and alcoholics alike.
Cobra Kai Martial Arts Lessons (
When the noble Sensei of East Asia developed the elegant art of karate, did it ever occur to them that a gang of WASP-y high shcoolers would one day use their fighting style to kick the shit out Ralph Macchio? Perhaps. But they would have assumed Macchio had at least invaded their land, not flirted with Elizabeth Shue on a beach. Trained in the ruthless Cobra Kai dojo, the aggressive student Johnny (William Zabka) and his cronies use their black robes, dirt bikes and blond feathered hair to terrorize the peaceful land of Reseda, Calif., before being defeated by an Italian kid from New Jersey, a Japanese handyman and three unnecessary sequels.
What's Wrong With It?
The Cobra Kai dojo is run by disturbed Vietnam veteran John Kreese (Martin Kove), who teaches his pupils a "no mercy" policy that encourages illegal leg-sweeping and clever heckles such as, "Put him in a body bag!" and "Must be take-a-worm-for-a-walk week!" (Zing!) Additionally, there was the minor drawback that Kreese was a murderous sociopath who encouraged his students to commit murder, and has been known to try to choke his prized pupils to death. Granted, if his ruthless philosophy yielded results, sending your kid there might be worth the presumably steep price (cost of mandatory dirt bike, in addition any legal fees incurred). However, Cobra Kai wasn't even as effective as the training style of one Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), who led Daniel Laruso (Macchio) to victory at the All Valley Karate Championship by teaching him yoga and making him do chores around the house.
Boss Sauce (
The mysteries of the human genome have fascinated scientists for decades. So who better to blaze the path of genetic exploration than Steven Q. Urkel, the 17-year-old suspender-clad virgin whose primary objective in developing this gene-splitting serum (which complements his DNA-modifying "Transformation Chamber") is hardly the advancement of human evolution. Rather Urkel created the serum to increase his "coolness" and seduce his neighbor's daughter as Steve's suave biological alter ego Stefan Urquelle.
What's Wrong With It?
Not only was Urkel's Boss Sauce developed with questionable motives, its effectiveness is totally subjective. If Stefan Urquelle is meant to represent the pinnacle of manliness, than the ultimate male apparently buttons his silk shirts to the collar and generally behaves like he's in a 1994 Boyz II Men video. "Did I do that?" If by "that" you mean pervert the miracle of evolution to get laid, Mr. Urkel, then yes, you did.
Blue Milk (Star Wars)
A long time ago on a dairy farm far, far away, the backwoods residents of Tatooine consumed this azure-tinted beverage. Even Luke Skywalker, future Jedi and hero of the Rebel Alliance, was a slave to blue milk, downing plastic tumbler after plastic tumbler of the stuff on his aunt and uncle's farm after a hard day of repairing moisture vaporators.
What's Wrong With It?
The Empire may have found its way to the deserts of Luke's remote home planet, but apparently the Food and Drug Administration didn't. According to the official Star Wars Databank, blue milk is extracted from the tits of a bantha. For those who didn't major in intergalactic zoology, you might recognize banthas as the hairy, yak-like beasts of burden used by Tatooine's ill-tempered (and seemingly unhealthy) Sand People. As the primary source of drink in Tatooine's global desert, blue milk explains why so many of the planet's inhabitants are driven to boozing their credits away at various Mos Eisley cantinas.
Anything by the Acme Company (
If the Looney Tunes universe were contemporary Midwestern America, the ACME Corp. would be Wal-Mart. Virtually every product used by Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and the rest of the two-dimensional consumers of Toon Town (Anti-Nightmare Machines, Do-It-Yourself Tornado Kits, etc.) comes from the ubiquitous ultra-conglomerate that rules over the Warner Bros.' economy with an iron fist.
What's Wrong With It?
Like the anonymous evil power company in Erin Brockovich, the ACME Corp. is an irresponsible manufacturer behind faulty products responsible for numerous injuries to its customers--specifically the gullible bird hunter Wile E. Coyote. Taking advantage of the carnivore's greed and desire for an unattainable, lightning-fast goal, ACME sells the starving Wile faulty product after faulty product, compounding their already hazardous policy of strapping a high-powered rocket to virtually every mode of transportation known to man.
Foot-Powered Automobile (
At first glance, these early automobiles probably seemed like a worthy investment to any modern, family man of the Bedrock community. While these cars may not be able to support a giant Brontosaurus rib, they seem to be adequate at supporting and transporting a family of three and their purple, shrieking dinosaur, which is more than we can say for most modern Honda Civics. Also, unlike the cars we drive today, the Flintstones car had a very simple design; if something went wrong, you could generally tell what it was at an immediate glance (wheel fell off, crushed by giant dinosaur, lack of transmission fluid, etc).
What's Wrong With It?
The loose-fitting, hole-ridden top makes this car totally useless in any weather conditions that aren't perfect. And, the total absence of a windshield makes the potential of swallowing giant, prehistoric bugs much more likely than anyone wants to admit. Also, we buy cars today so we don't have to walk and so we can get to our destination faster. In Bedrock, transportation via car is subject to the same speed and endurance limitations of the driver when he's on foot. Actually, given the fact that you have to lug around an enormous stone car with you when you travel, "driving" one of these cars is actually more work than walking on foot. Let's not forget that a flat tire today means you get a new tire and a flat tire in Bedrock means you probably have to amputate your foot.
Furthermore, the floorless nature of these cars makes accidentally dropping your baby about a billion times more dangerous than it already is.
The Three-in-One Bagpipe/Flamethrower/Machine Gun (The World is Not Enough)
The Bond universe is loaded with devices that seem boner-inducingly awesome when Q describes them. It's really amazing how adding "Oh, also it shoots shark bombs" can turn even the most boring pen or watch or cigarette lighter into Product of the Year. Really, The Sharper Image doesn't need to come out with a new product for the rest of time; they can just equip all of their preexisting products with ray gun or grappling hook capabilities and watch the profits roll in. The bagpipe that isn't just an ordinary bagpipe introduced by Q in The World is Not Enough goes the extra mile by shooting flames and machine gun bullets, making it seem like the perfect gift for anyone who's been ridiculed for carrying bagpipes (as statistics show, anyone who's ever carried bagpipes).
What's Wrong With It?
The idea behind it is deceit, as in, fooling your enemies to think it's just an ordinary set of bagpipes. The problem is, why the fuck are you carrying around bagpipes in the first place? If secrecy is the name of the game, you won't fool anyone by carrying around something as pointless as bagpipes unless your target enemy's base of operations is in the center of the St. Patrick's Day Parade. Given the unlikelihood of that particular scenario, the Bagpipe Destruction Trifecta is absolutely useless everywhere else.
"Don't worry Renard, as you can see, I'm completely unarmed. No guns, no knives, just my lucky set of regular, old, incredibly heavy bagpipes that smell suspiciously like lighter fluid. No reason to keep your guns trained on me or anything, I'm just gonna play a quick song or two."
Also, at this point in Bond's career, every single henchman must have known that anything he carried could probably explode or fire bullets or fill up gaping plot holes at the touch of a button. For Christ's sake, Bond has been known to hide a machine gun in the full-sized mannequin of a sleeping Mexican. There's no way he's getting past an evil bad guy security check with a set of bagpipes.
"Look, I don't even know what the hell those are, Bond, but you're not getting in here with them and that's final. They're clearly designed to explode or drill a hole in the floor or make me shit my pants or something, so just put them down."
Paulie's Robot (Rocky IV)
Given to Paulie as a gift, the robot in Rocky IV splits it's time between being genuinely terrifying and fawning over Paulie. At first, the robot sounds like a Speak and Spell and looks like a vacuum. But Paulie (who was apparently taking extremely advanced electrical engineering classes in between shifts at the meat factory), somehow manages to change its voice and bestow it with the capacity for love. Shortly after learning how to love, the robot teaches itself to nag and proceeds to bother Paulie about his poor hygiene and excessive tobacco usage.
Pay attention to the thick, almost suffocating sexual tension between Paulie and the robot. Note the robot's sincerity when it says "You're the greatest." Look at the tenderness in his eyes when Paulie says simply, "She loves me."
They're totally fucking.
What's Wrong With It?
On the surface, there's nothing wrong with robotic sex slaves. It can be argued that the siren call of sex-bots has been the main driver of technology ever since Blade Runner (after all, the sun-deprived lab rat who made this didn't do it because he thought it'd get him laid by a human.).
But robotic sex slaves would only be useful in so far as they reduce the baggage that comes with an actual sexual relationship. Paulie's robot nags and worries just like an ordinary wife, with the added social stigma that comes with having a sexual relationship with something that looks like a trashcan. Pay close attention to the look the driver gives Paulie when he jokes that he's going to get the robots "wires tied" when he gets back.
This is the face of true disgust.
As an aside: The "wires tied" joke is baffling on a number of levels. While something about getting her voice box taken out would seem more appropriate here, Paulie instead uses a play on words that would seem to imply that he's going to prevent his robot from reproducing sexually. This raises a Phillip K Dick novel's worth of questions, none of which should be implied by a throw away line in a PG-rated movie about a boxer ending the Cold War.
If you liked this article, check out our rundown of The 7 Worst Fictional Towns In America .
