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• From goggles for pooches to ¬¬¬¬¬¬plastic wishbones, we count fifteen of the dumbest
products and inventions that made millions for their creators!
15 – Dog Wigs, • We all know dog owners like to go a little
overboard when showing their furry best friends love. It’s why pet accessories have become
a multi-million dollar industry. You can now adorn your pet with every kind of weird and
wacky accessory imaginable. • Dog wigs are the latest travesty – I
mean innovation – by entrepreneurial pet owner, Leah Workman. Her successful dog wigs
brand Cushzilla was inspired by a trip to Japan.
• The stylish headpieces include coloured pigtails, neon mohawks, blonde curls and imitations
of celebrity hairstyles, like the Lady Gaga or Marilyn Monroe.
• So if you thought your Pomeranian–Poodle cross couldn’t look any more ridiculous,
pick them up a fluorescent pink dog wig and see how wrong you were.
14 – Flowbee, • Flowbees are a million dollar Nineties
idea. They’re basically vacuum cleaners with hair clippers attached. You run the electric
clippers through your hair for a cheap DIY haircut that’ll probably invite smartarse
remarks like, ‘Did you lose a fight with a lawnmower?’ But, hey, thanks to the vacuum,
you at least won’t have any hair clippings to clean up.
• The Flowbee came from Californian madman Rick Hunts, a carpenter who demonstrated his
bizarre product at State Fairs before stepping it up to late-night infomercials.
• By the turn of the new millennium, he had sold two million Flowbees and was officially
invited into the millionaires club. 13 – Pet Rocks,
• While neither rocks nor the art of swindling idiots can be considered an ‘invention’,
the pet rock did earn its creator millions of dollars and was inventive.
• Gary Dahl was an advertising executive from California with rocks in his head – that
is, he had the so-stupid-it’s-genius idea to decorate and market rocks as pets.
• Dahl purchased ordinary grey pebbles from a construction supplier and sold them as pets,
spawning a wildly successful nation-wide fad. Some rocks had painted faces, some had glued-on
googly eyes – but all of them had personality, at least to the kids who bought them.
• In a stroke of marketing genius, Dahl sold his product as the perfect pet, as it
never needed to be fed or cleaned up after. It came with a humorous manual instructing
owners how to talk to it and teach it cool tricks like sit and stay.
• The Pet Rock debuted in 1975 at $3.95 – or roughly $16 in today’s economy. In
six months, Dahl sold more than five million rocks, making the equivalent of $56 million
in profit – because buying and delivering the rocks cost him next to nothing. Rock on.
12 – The Beer Belly and Wine Rack Bra, • Because encouraging alcoholism is cool,
I give you the Beer Belly bladder and Wine Rack Bra! These his-and-hers alcohol concealers
are designed to be hidden under clothing so you can stay blotto during your child’s
boring sports games, music recitals and PTA meetings.
• The Beer Belly bladder holds eighty oz of alcohol, which is more than a six pack’s
worth, and makes you look like a fat lard, while the Wine Rack bra turns A cups into
double Ds. • These products are amazingly successful
with those times you want to drink in public, but feel they can’t because of the pesky
law or judgemental society. I’m struggling with the fact these millionaire entrepreneurs
are lining their pockets at the expense of their struggling alcoholic customer base,
but maybe that’s because I haven’t had my 10 am Mojito yet.
11 – Wacky Wall Walker, • Wacky Wall Walkers were an enormously
successful octopus-shaped toy moulded from sticky elastomer. When thrown against a wall,
these toys could ‘walk’ their way down. • They were manufactured in the US by Ken
Hakuta, who purchased the rights from a Japanese toymaker after recognising their marketing
potential. • Sales crawled along like an octopus on
a wall until a Washington Post reporter wrote about the product. The article generated so
much buzz that over 240 million sold within a few months, earning Ken around eighty million
dollars. 10 – Beanie Babies,
• With profits totalling in the billions, Beanie Babies are a toy fad of cultish proportions.
For those living under a pet rock, these are basically bean-filled sacks with furry ears
and cutesy-wutesy names like Patti the Platypus or Dobby the Derp-Derp.
• The toys were an immediate success for their creator, Ty Warner, with 30,000 sold
at their first toy show. Incredibly, Ty built his empire without any advertising and without
selling them through major chain stores, like Toys-R-Us. Instead of causing his product
to fall through the cracks into obscurity, the toys’ rarity made them more desirable
to consumers. Ty also retired certain models at the end of their initial stock-run, turning
them coveted collectibles. • At the peak of Beanie Baby mania, Ty Warner
raked in $700 million in a single year. He’s now a billionaire, all because of the game-changing
idea to fill some sacks with beans. 9 – Snuggies,
• The infamous Snuggie is a blanket with arms that became an unlikely phenomenon in
the late 2000s. More than twenty million Americans purchased a Snuggie between fall 2008 and
Christmas 2009, at roughly $20 a blanket. • Snuggies, and their less successful competitor
Slankets, appeal to people who value comfort over style, and to those who want to freely
use their hands while wearing a blanket. • Although the fad has died down somewhat
in recent years, sales remain strong – particularly for kids and, err, pets. They’re often seen
on airplanes and at sporting events, and have even inspired ‘Snuggie pub crawls’, where
drunken blanket-people stumble from bar to bar trying in vain to get laid.
8 – Big Mouth Billy Bass, • Big Mouth Billy Bass is a singing wall-mounted
animatronic fish that helped reel in the dough for its Texan novelty toy creators Gemmys
in the late Nineties. • Invented by Joe Pellettiere, this singing
fish was a hugely popular gag gift and stocking stuffer in the early 2000s. Stores sold hundreds
of the annoying things each hour and struggled to keep up with demand. Sales topped a million
in the year 2000 alone and a whole host of imitators soon flooded the market.
• Billy Bass sung songs like ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’, and anyone unfortunate
enough to work in a store that sold them is probably still undergoing therapy from having
to hear it all day every day. 7 – The Happy Smile Trainer,
• Forgotten how to smile? This legitimate Japanese sensation will teach you how again
in just five minutes a day. • Consumers use the Happy Smile Trainer
to enhance their mouth and jaw muscles and create perfect Joker-style smiles. By biting
down on the silicone mouthpiece for five minutes once a day, they’ll allegedly improve the
angles and balance of their face and cheeks, and strengthen their teeth and gums.
• The science is unconfirmed, but one thing’s for sure: at $52 US a pop, this product’s
creators from the Japanese Trend Shop are smiling all the way to the bank.
6 – Head On, • Head On is a controversial product that
claims to relieve headaches. Since virtually everyone gets headaches, the target audience
is the entire human race – or at least the gullible majority.
• Head On gained notoriety in 2006 because of its repetitive commercial that consisted
only of the tagline ‘Head On’. • The instructions say to apply it directly
to the forehead three times in succession. Apparently it worked for some, but this is
most likely just a placebo effect. 5 – The Slinky,
• The Slinky has been as ubiquitous as Mickey Mouse since its 1945 debut.
• The toy was invented by naval engineer Richard James, and came upon the idea by accident
after dropping a tension spring he was working with and watching it slink away across the
floor. • The first four hundred slinkies sold out
within ninety minutes, and the rest is history: two hundred and fifty million sales later,
Richard and his $1 toy lived very comfortably – except for a little rough patch where
he suffered a mid-life crisis, left his wife and joined a cult. These eccentric inventors
… 4 – Antenna Balls,
• Antenna balls are a strangely popular car antenna decoration that was especially
popular in the Seventies and Eighties, when tacky ornaments were cool.
• The history of antenna balls or toppers can be traced back to the 1960s when Union
Gas started putting out an orange ball with the logo ‘76’ on it. Disney also produced
a Mickey Mouse one in ’91 and, in 1995, Jack in the Box began its smiley face antenna
ball campaign. • With a few inventors credited, this humble
little ball has made many people very rich. One lucky entrepreneur, Jason Wall, has made
millions through his company, In-Concept Inc., which manufactures more than 500,000 custom
antenna balls a month. 3 – iFart App,
• iFart is an iPhone app that replicates nature’s oldest and crudest joke: flatulence.
It has a range of farting sounds to suit every mood and occasion, and features a stealth
trigger for remote farts. It’s a favourite for annoying siblings.
• The app was launched in December 2008 by Infomedia, a technology company owned by
internet marketer Joel Comm. Joel’s inspiration no doubt came from a heavy night of Mexican
food. • The app was enormously popular in the
lead-up to Christmas 2008 – the farting season – and took the number one spot in
the iTunes app chart for several weeks. At the peak of its popularity, the app brought
in more than $10,000 a day for Infomedia. 2 – Doggles,
• Doggles are goggle-style sunglasses for the pooch that knows style.
• Although these are super cool, they also come with some alleged health benefits. As
Muttley from Wacky Races can attest, they protect pet eyes from the sun’s glare; keep
out dust, debris and wind; block UV rays; and assist in relieving ocular medical conditions,
such as a rare autoimmune disorder that prevents dogs’ eyes from producing tears.
• Apparently, Doggles are even used by American working dogs in Iraq. The goggles helped protect
their eyes from windblown sand. It’s likely search-and-rescue dogs may use them in the
future, too. • Doggles, LLC has sold millions of pairs
at $19.90 a pop. The company has also featured on popular news shows like CNN and The Today
Show. 1 – Plastic Wishbones,
• You know when you finish a roast dinner with your loved ones and there’s that momentary
squabble about who’s going to get to do the wishbone? Ken Ahroni, founder and inventor
of Lucky Break Wishbone Corp., knows all about this. That’s why he conceived a revolutionary
advance in plastic wishbone technology. • Now, thanks to this strange plastic innovation,
everyone, even vegans, can have a wishbone all their own. Ken had to fracture hundreds
of furculas to successfully create a plastic that would break like bone. It took hundreds
of hours of R&D to create a plastic that could replicate that satisfying snap instead of
just snapping into a thousand tiny shards. • Ken’s company sells millions of plastic
wishbones at four for $3.99 or, if you do a lot of wishing, four hundred for $195.99.
It’s certainly an original idea. I’ll give him that.