6 Most Spectacularly Useless Products from the Recent Consumer Electronics Show
Every January the giants of the tech industry converge on the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to offer a preview of their upcoming wonders in hardware, software, and gadgetry. Of course, along for the ride are several other companies who show off the following…
The Vibrating Fork
Wish there was a fork that made eating peas impossible or gave you an idea of what a mini-stroke would feel like during dinner? Introducing the Vibrating Fork, whose very name may get it banned from some stores. Designed to start shaking whenever a person is shoveling meals too fast into their food hole, this device was created to prevent digestive problems or obesity caused by eating very quickly. Unfortunately, what it doesn’t prevent is the shame of sitting in a restaurant and whipping out flatware that resembles a rectal thermometer with tines and won’t let you consume meat sauce without splattering everywhere because you just can’t wait to shovel two pounds of pasta in your mouth.
Personalized 3-D Face Toy
Moms who have been longing to put a three-dimensional likeness of their tyke on a knock-off Tigger plush without caring just how much it resembles an interspecies-spawned Chucky doll, your time has come! Thanks to a company called Minime, you can now stare into the protruding button-nosed, dead-eyed gaze of your precious child from a toy doll, a smartphone case, or practically anything you wish to be scared of—or make you frightened of your very own offspring—for the rest of your life.
A toilet-training device with its own iPad stand, the iPotty comes complete with several educational apps that promise to help your child disembowel their Gerbers and so are probably too disgusting to ever be seen by the human eye. The theory behind the gadget is that if your child is busy happily smearing God knows what on your iPad while they sit on the can (you didn’t think for 40 bucks the iPotty would come with its own iPad, did you?), the kid will be more apt to stay seated until what needs to get done gets done. The reality, however, is that children will load up on enough rice to get so constipated they spend six hours of alone time in the bathroom playing "Angry Birds."
Sort of a Roomba for your windows (if your Roomba were to suddenly develop Spider-Man like climbing powers that would surely signal the start of Skynet), the Winbot moves around cleaning all the glass inside and out. What sounds like a high-tech squeegee, though, takes a turn for the worse when you find out it won’t work in the rain, snow, or any temperature under 40 degrees. In short, it’s a temperamental, whiny little robot that will probably spend most of its time slowly moving back and forth on your glass coffee table, watching Netflix streaming.
Brainwave Cat Ears
What if you’re not quite ready to lose your freaking mind and become a full-fledged furry but you still want to alert people to your moods like someone’s pet? Then slap on a pair of the Brainwave Cat Ears and watch as the headset reads your mind and responds to your every emotion, so long as you don’t have more than three of them. The ears perk up when you’re excited, wiggle when you’re really focused, and droop when you come to the sad conclusion that its stuff like this that’s preventing you from getting invited to parties.
Sling Harness Video Game Controller
No doubt believing people are tired of the physical freedom they get with a Wii remote or Xbox Kinect, the good people of Intellect Motion decided to focus on just the second part of their name and create a game controller that looks like a bungee jump for agoraphobics. Using a harness, several large rubber bands, LED sensors, and a complete inability to figure out when a drinking game has gone too far, the "Smotion" captures the player’s entire range of motion to help stimulate mental and physical prowess, especially when the cords snap and you’re flung straight through your living room window or you wind up hanging upside down from the ceiling so ensnared in knots your family decides it’s easier if the rest of them just move then to free you from your hell.
Would you want any of these things? Let us know in the comments!