The Worst Things For Sale

From the makers of Rapid Ramen comes Rapid Hot Dog Cooker, a plastic tray that is in no way simpler or faster than putting a hot dog on a plate and microwaving it for a minute.

These gloves hold a ten-ounce flask in each hand, for a total of twenty ounces of liquor.

“It’s not for liquor!” you tap out on your keyboard, your urge to be contrarian overwhelming your ability to type anything else. Nope, the manufacturer shows it with a bottle of Fireball.

Boxing Fight Ball is a tennis ball you attach to your head and fight. I don’t know how it would work in practice, but at least the manufacturer insists that it’s “Improved design Will not leave a mark on the forehead,” suggesting that it used to also leave a mark on your forehead.

The PanWaffle is a piece of cookware that you use to make a pancake-waffle. No, not pancakes and waffles. Just a pancake-waffle.

Pancakes are beloved for their fluffy, soft texture, and waffles are best when crisp, so I’d imagine a PanWaffle is neither. Not that, according to reviews, you can even use it without it falling apart.

“Brainol” is a typical supplement advertised as making you think better and harder. It’s got the usual soup of St. John’s Wort, Huperzine A, DMAE, amino acids and B-vitamins. Several of the ingredients interact with prescription and over-the-counter medications, and their effects on qualities like “mental clarity” or “energy” have never been quantified in reputable studies.

The word “Natural” is not regulated by the FDA, meaning that any manufacturer of food or supplements can describe their product as such. This leads to Natural Brain Enhancers, a pill cheaper than Brainol, containing different brain ingredients altogether. The product Onnit Alpha Brain classes up the word natural by calling it “Earth Grown Botanicals,” an incredibly roundabout way of saying “plants.” Neuro Ignite shows a silhouette of gears literally turning inside someone’s head, and Brain Juice is a drinkable liquid which self-describes as “Energy for your brain.”

My far-and-away favorite, though, is Genius Mushrooms, a combination of three dried and powdered fungi species whose ad copy claims that “Humans share more DNA with mushrooms than with plants,” which may be technically true but is not relevant. (Humans also share more DNA with bonobos than plants, but we don’t eat them for brain power.) Despite this, neither cordyceps nor reishi have been proven to be efficacient in improving quantitative measurements of cognitive health in repeatable, controlled medical studies.

The minister John Paul Jackson passed from this earth in 2015, but not before writing this scare-tome to encourage parents to ban their children from Pokemon.

Unfortunately for Pokemon Company International, his campaign was successful, causing the Pokemon brand to go bankrupt and fail shortly after the book was published in the year 2000, leaving the world with nothing but memories of the once-popular Pokemon.

Traumatic brain injury is horrible. I’m just not sure that “Smash Traumatic Brain Injury” is the best way to phrase that.