History DarthWiki / IdiotDesign

* Speaking of British Rail diesel locomotives, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_28 Class 28]] wasn't a hell of a lot better. Created as a result of BR's 1955 Modernisation Plan, the type used an unusual Co-Bo [[note]]a three-axle bogey on one end and a two-axle bogey on the other[[/note]] wheel arrangement, a configuration that made maintenance insanely difficult for yard workers. Worse, much like the Class 17, its Crossley 8-cylinder HST Vee8 two stroke engines proved extremely unreliable, suffering frequently from vibration-induced fuel pipe and water pipe fractures, cylinder defects, and excessive water temperature causing shutdowns in addition to being very noisy and producing unacceptable levels of smoky exhaust fumes. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking The front windows also tended to fall out a lot while the trains were running.]] Within two years of its introduction the entire class was handed back to manufacturer Metropolitan-Vickers for remedial work on the engines and to cure the problems with the windows. This cost Metro-Vick millions of pounds just to get running. In the end, the Class 28 was retired after only eleven years in service. As with the Class 17, only a single unit survives to this day in operational condition, the rest having been scrapped.

** An episode of ''WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine'' featured a character based on the Class 17 named Derek, whose engine overheated while he was pulling a long train of China Clay trucks, leaving Bill and Ben to pull both him and the trucks to their intended destination.

-->--'''Zack from [=JerryRigEverything=]''', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3cWVdLqXCg on]] one of the reasons the Nexus 6P failed the bend test so catastrophically.

* The Google Nexus 6P, made by Huawei, has multiple major design flaws that make accidental damage from sitting on it potentially catastrophic: the back isn't screwed into the structure of the phone even though it's not intended to be removable, leaving the thin aluminum on the sides and a slab of Gorilla Glass 4 not designed for structural integrity to hold the phone together; there's a gap between the battery and motherboard right by the power button that creates a weak point; and the plastic and metal are held together with dovetail joints, which are intended for ''woodworking''. Zack from [=JerryRigEverything=] was able to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTIaUH6PIvo destroy]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3cWVdLqXCg both]] Nexus 6Ps he tested immediately.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_17 British Rail Class 17]] is an Alleged Train if there ever was one. The idea was to create a single-cab mainline diesel locomotive with good forward visibility in both directions, something which was not permitted by any of the other locomotive types in use by BR at the time. Unfortunately, the Class 17 failed to live up to expectations. The twin Paxman 6ZHXL engines that powered the locomotive were poorly designed and often prone to overheating. Worse, the long nose and centre cab layout meant that the crew could not see the area directly in front of them, thus negating the whole purpose of the design. Later units had their engines replaced with more reliable ones, but this was not enough to wash away the nasty taste in people's mouths. This eventually left British Rail with little choice but to dispose of the type and replace them with the already proven Class 20. All units were scrapped save for a single locomotive, which is currently in the possession of the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway.

* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_17 BR Class 17]] is an Alleged Train if there ever was one. The idea was to create a single-cab mainline diesel locomotive with good forward visibility in both directions, something which was not permitted by any of the other designs in use at the time. Unfortunately, the Class 17 failed to live up to expectations. The twin Paxman 6ZHXL engines that powered the locomotive were poorly designed and often prone to overheating. Worse, the long nose and centre cab layout meant that the crew could not see the area directly in front of them, thus negating the whole purpose of the design. Later units had their engines replaced with more reliable ones, but this was not enough to wash away the nasty taste in people's mouths. This eventually left British Rail with little choice but to dispose of the type and replace them with the already proven Class 20. All units were scrapped save for a single locomotive, which is currently in the possession of the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway.

* The Dell Inspiron line was somewhat known for having ''very'' faulty speakers. These usually boil down to two issues. A) The ribbon cable that connects the speakers to the motherboard is very frail, and often comes loose if you move your device too much (did we mention this is a ''laptop'' we're talking about?). B) The headphone jack has a physical switch that turns off the speakers. If you plug in something in to the jack, the speakers turn off. Unplug it, and they turn on. Simple, right? Well, this switch is bound to get stuck at one point or another, and the only way to even get to it is to disassemble the damn thing, or by spraying contact cleaner in the port and hoping that the air pressure flips the switch.

* While there are many things that set back the NES Classic Edition (stock issues, inconvenient design choices, tons of alternatives) one glaring flaw it has is its hard drive. Many fans have calculated that the system could easily hold the NES's entire library 10 times over including box art and metadata, and yet it only uses a small fraction of it. While there's many people who would have put the empty space to good use (it's very easy to hack the thing by simply flashing the hard drive and putting whatever you want on it), one has to wonder why they gave it such a massive hard drive only to do next to nothing with it, especially when the games that are already on it are [[SoOkayItsAverage unimpressive as it is]].

* While there are many things that set back the NES Classic Edition (stock issues, inconvenient design choices, tons of alternatives) one glaring flaw it has is its hard drive. Many fans have calculated that the system could easily hold the NES's entire library 10 times over including box art and metadata, and yet it only uses a small fraction of it. While there's many people who would have put the empty space to good use (it's very easy to hack the thing by simply flashing the hard drive and putting whatever you want on it), one has to wonder why they gave it such a massive hard drive only to do next to nothing with it, especially when the games that are already on it are [[SoOkayItsAverage unimpressive as it is]].

* Unlike every other plane in this section, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10 McDonnell-Douglas DC-10]] would never have fit on the [[Horrible/{{Other}} page it was originally on]], but early cargo doors had one serious design flaw: it was possible to close them without actually closing them, resulting in the doors occasionally ''blowing out during flight''. This resulted in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_96 one incident over Windsor, Ontario]] where the plane in question barely made it back to Detroit and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981 a crash in Ermenonville Forest in France]] that killed everyone on board. The latter was caused by [=McDonnell=]-Douglas not actually fixing the problem after the former but rather slightly redesigning the doors with a window and attempting to warn ground crews to look through said window to make sure the pins looked right, not considering that [[LanguageBarrier ground crews might not speak any language on the warning sticker]]. Needless to say, after the latter, [=McDonnell=]-Douglas and the FAA got the message and [=McDonnell=]-Douglas redesigned the cargo door properly.

->''So, you wanna know where I learned about dovetail joints? My high school beginner's woodworking class. Must have been brainstorming amateur hour at Huawei when they suggested joining aluminum and plastic with a woodworking joint.''

* The Google Nexus 6P, made by Huawei, has multiple major design flaws that make accidental damage from sitting on it potentially catastrophic: the back isn't screwed into the structure of the phone even though it's not intended to be removable, leaving the thin aluminum on the sides and a slab of Gorilla Glass 4 not designed for structural integrity to hold the phone together, there's a gap between the battery and motherboard right by the power button that creates a weak point, and the plastic and metal are held together with dovetail joints, which are intended for ''woodworking''. Zack from [=JerryRigEverything=] was able to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTIaUH6PIvo destroy]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3cWVdLqXCg both]] Nexus 6Ps he tested immediately.

* What about ''Film/TheDarkKnight "hidden blade" katana toy? Y'know, the one with the ''hard plastic spring-loaded blade'' in the handle? The one that shot out with such force that it can cause ''blunt force trauma'' if the kids weren't expecting it? The one that can be activated by an ''easily-hit trigger'' in the handle? Yeah, that one. How could this be safe for kids?

** While the UsefulNotes/WiiU ultimately proved a failure for several reasons, poor component choices helped contribute to its near-total lack of third-party support. It'd only be a slight exaggeration to say that the system's CPU was essentially just three Wii [=CPUs=] -- and by extension, six ''UsefulNotes/GameCube'' [=CPUs=] -- heavily overclocked and slapped together on the same die, with performance that was abysmally poor by 2012 standards. Its GPU, while not ''as'' slow, wasn't all that much faster than those of the [=PS3=] and Xbox 360, and used a shader model in-between those of the older consoles and their successors, meaning that ported [=PS3=]/360 games didn't take advantage of the newer hardware, while games designed for the [=PS4=] and Xbox One wouldn't even work to begin with due to the lack of necessary feature support. The system would likely have fared much better if Nintendo had just grabbed an off-the-shelf AMD laptop APU -- which had enough power even in 2012 to brute-force emulate the Wii, eliminating the main reason to keep with the [=PowerPC=] line -- stuffed it into a Wii case and called it a day. Fortunately Nintendo actually seem to have learned from this, basing the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch on an existing [=nVidia=] mobile chip which thus far has proven surprisingly capable of punching above its weight.

** While the UsefulNotes/WiiU ultimately proved a failure for several reasons, poor component choices helped contribute to its near-total lack of third-party support. It'd only be a slight exaggeration to say that the system's CPU was essentially just three Wii [=CPUs=] -- and by extension, three ''UsefulNotes/GameCube'' [=CPUs=] -- heavily overclocked and slapped together on the same die, with performance that was abysmally poor by 2012 standards. Its GPU, while not ''as'' slow, wasn't all that much faster than those of the [=PS3=] and Xbox 360, and used a shader model in-between those of the older consoles and their successors, meaning that ported [=PS3=]/360 games didn't take advantage of the newer hardware, while games designed for the [=PS4=] and Xbox One wouldn't even work to begin with due to the lack of necessary feature support. The system would likely have fared much better if Nintendo had just grabbed an off-the-shelf AMD laptop APU -- which had enough power even in 2012 to brute-force emulate the Wii, eliminating the main reason to keep with the [=PowerPC=] line -- stuffed it into a Wii case and called it a day. Fortunately Nintendo actually seem to have learned from this, basing the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch on an existing [=nVidia=] mobile chip which thus far has proven surprisingly capable of punching above its weight.

* The Dell Inspiron line was somewhat known for having ''very'' faulty speakers. These usually boil down to two issues. A) The ribbon cable that connects the speakers to the motherboard is very frail, and often comes loose if you move your device too much (did we mention this is a ''laptop'' we're talking about?). B) The headphone jack has a physical switch that turns off the speakers. If you plug in something in to the jack, the speakers turn off. Unplug it, and they turn on. Simple, right? Well, this switch is bound to get stuck at one point or another, and the only way to even get to it is disassemble the damn thing, or by spraying contact cleaner in the port and hoping that the air pressure flips the switch.

* This happened a lot during WWI, with many planes designed with the gun right behind the propeller, [[TooDumbToLive causing the propeller to be destroyed by the aircraft's gunfire]]. Later designs would time the gunshots to pass through the propeller blades without damaging them.

** '''[[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Gold_Plastic_Syndrome Gold Plastic Syndrome.]]''' A number of Transformers toys made in the late 1980s and early 1990s were, in part or in whole, constructed with a kind of swirly plastic that crumbled quite quickly, especially on moving parts. Certain toys (like the reissue of Slingshot, various Pretenders and the Japanese exclusive Black Zarak) are known to ''shatter before they are taken out of the box''. There are pictures of the effects of GPS in the article linked above. Thankfully, this has been fixed and that plastic is not used...mostly.
** Besides the GPS plastic, some translucent plastic variants are also known to break very easily. The '''Deluxe-class [[Film/{{Transformers}} 2007 movie]] Brawl''' figure had its inner gear mechanics made out of such plastic, which tended to shatter right at the figure's first transformation. On top of that, the posts that held its arms in place didn't match the shape of the holes they were supposed to peg into. Thankfully, the toy was released some time later in new colors, which fixed all of these issues.
** '''Unposeable "brick" Transformers'''. The Generation 1 toys [[GrandfatherClause can get away with it]], but in later series, like most ''Armada'' and some ''Energon'' toys (especially the Powerlinked modes), they are atrocious -- '''''Energon'' Wing Saber''' is literally a FlyingBrick, and not [[Franchise/{{Superman}} in the good way]]. With today's toy technology, there just isn't an excuse for something with all the poseability of a cinderblock and whose transformation basically consists of lying the figure down, especially the larger and more expensive ones.
** Toys over-laden with intrusive gimmicks, [[BlatantLies affectionately]] nicknamed '''"Gimmickformers"''', are generally detested. While these are meant to cater to a younger crowd, when a figure has so many things going on that these detract from the transformation, articulation, and aesthetics, even they may repelled by it. Such a figure is the infamous '''''Anime/TransformersArmada'' Side Swipe''' -- featuring a boring (though passable) car-mode, a Mini-Con "catapult" that doesn't normally work, and a [[http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/8/85/Armada_Side_Swipe_toy.jpg hideous robot-mode]] with excess vehicle-bits hanging off everywhere (including the aforementioned catapult on his ''[[UnfortunateCharacterDesign butt]]''), the posability of a brick, and the exciting Mini-Con activated action-feature of raising its right arm, which you can do manually. Toy-reviewer WebVideo/TJOmega once did a breakdown on the figure, coming to the conclusion that its head was the only part not to have any detracting design faults.

** '''Sky Dancers'''. The wicked offspring of a spinning top, a helicopter, and a Barbie doll. It came out looking like a beautiful fairy with propeller wings -- and a launcher. When those little dolls went spinning... well, let's just say that there's a good reason why nowadays, most flying toys like this have rings encircling the protruding, rotating wings. Their foam wings became blades of doom that could seriously mess up a kid's face with cuts and slashes. There's no way to control those beauties once they are launched, and it's hard to predict where they will go...which is ''why'' they're "Dancers"!
*** There was also a [[PinkGirlBlueBoy boys' version]] called '''Dragon Flyz'''. There are also imitators. They could be quite enjoyable -- it's just that they were also surprisingly dangerous.

** '''Lawn Darts'''. Feathered Javelins! Surprisingly, they came out in the early 1960s and were only recalled when the first injuries were reported... in ''1988''.

** '''Snacktime Cabbage Patch Dolls''', a 1996 Cabbage Patch doll sold with the gimmick that its mouth moved as it appeared to "eat" the plastic carrots and cookies sold with it. The problem was, once it started chewing, it didn't stop until the plastic food was sucked in...and little fingers and hair set it off just as well as plastic food. The only way to turn it off was to remove the toy's backpack... something buried in the instructions so deep, nobody saw it until it was announced publicly.

* The '''2006 ''Easy-Bake Oven'''''. Easy-Bake ovens have been around since the 1950s and are, as the name claims, easy to use...but a recent redesign made the opening small enough to put a tiny hand in, but not take it out. Next to a ''newly designed heating element''. [[DidntThinkThisThrough Ouch.]]
* '''Aqua Dots''' (Bindeez in its native Australia) is (or was) a fun little collection of interlocking beads designed for the creation of multidimensional shapes, as seen on TV. You had to get them wet before they would stick together. But the coating released one ingredient it shouldn't have when exposed to water -- a form of the date-rape drug [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Hydroxybutyric_acid GHB]]. Should someone put ''that'' in their mouths... This wasn't the fault of the company that made them, but rather the [[MadeInCountryX Chinese plant]] that manufactured the toys. Essentially, they found out that some chemical was much less expensive than the one they were supposed to be using, but still worked. They didn't do the research that said chemical metabolizes into GHB, or else they didn't care. (They also didn't tell the company that they made the swap.) And yet, for all the Chinese toy manufacturer chaos that was going on in the media at the time, the blame fell squarely on the toy company for this. They still exist, though thankfully with the non-GHB formulation. They were renamed to Pixos (Beados in Australia) and marketed as "safety tested". In fact, they were marketed the same way Aqua Dots were, with the same announcer and background music ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf_9PbBrK34 compare]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7r-L6YxAnM contrast]]). Now, they are marketed in America under the name of Beados.
* '''Chilly Bang! Bang!''' was a chilled juice-drink toy released in 1989 by Mackie International consisting of a gun-shaped packet of juice. To drink it, you had to [[AteHisGun stick the barrel in your mouth and pull the trigger]]. And if you thought ''VideoGame/Persona3'' was controversial...

* What about the '''''[[Film/TheDarkKnight Dark Knight]]'' "hidden blade" katana toy'''? Y'know, the one with the ''hard plastic spring-loaded blade'' in the handle? The one that shot out with such force that it can cause ''blunt force trauma'' if the kids weren't expecting it? The one that can be activated by an ''easily-hit trigger'' in the handle? Yeah, that one. How could this be safe for kids?
* The '''[=DigiDraw=]''' promised to make tracing, an already simple act, even easier by placing the thing to be traced between a light and a suspended glass pane, projecting its image onto a blank piece of paper. Its ridiculously poor design meant that even if you could assemble it, the resulting projection was faint at best, and it would screw with your focus to the point where you couldn't do a perfect trace, assuming you hadn't already ruined it by nudging the paper even slightly. [[http://www.amazon.com/Overbreak-Digi-Draw/product-reviews/B0000C9WFQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar And trust us, we are not alone in this belief.]]
* In a similar case to the ''Transformers'' GPS above, '''Toys/{{LEGO}}''' also fumbled up their own plastic around '07, which resulted in nearly all of the lime-green colored pieces becoming ridiculously fragile. This affected the ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' sets of that era greatly, which were already prone to breaking due to the faulty sculpting of the ball-socket joints. Since that line of sets had more lime-colored pieces than usual, it is needless to say that fans were not amused with the ordeal, as it meant that they ''couldn't take apart and rebuild their LEGO sets''. Reportedly, some of these lime pieces broke right at the figures' first assembly.

* '''Marvin's Magic Drawing Board''', which came along near the end of TheNineties. It billed itself as a reusable scratchboard. Even if it were, in fact, reusable, simply putting a mark on it took the will of a thousand men. Much like the later [=DigiDraw=], it was meant to do something simple, and it couldn't do ''that.''
* '''Rollerblade Franchise/{{Barbie}}''', which had a gimmick that made the skates spark. Slightly risky if used on lacquered vanities with hairspray in the air.

* '''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucO-tGMebZY Tie 'N Tangle]]''', a game based on wrapping other players in a web of nylon string, would otherwise be SoBadItsGood based on its [[AccidentalInnuendo unintentional reference to]] [[BoundAndGagged bondage]] had it not been for its significant safety hazards: people can fall and hit their head, be strangled by the cord; etc. Even worse, the cord is too strong to be broken by hand, in case an emergency ''does'' happen. WebVideo/JeepersMedia suggests ''destroying'' this game, as its vintage worth is far outweighed by the hazards it possesses.

* The Apple Magic Mouse 2 tried to improve upon the original Magic Mouse by making its battery rechargeable. Unfortunately, this choice was widely ridiculed, as for some reason, [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zqd1404.png the charging port was located on the underside of the mouse]], rendering it inoperable while plugged in. One wonders why they couldn't just put the port on the front, like pretty much other chargeable mouse.

* The Coleco Adam. First of all, its power supply went through the printer, meaning it would brick if the printer stopped working. It didn't even have an OS installed -- you had to install it with a cassette. This wouldn't be so bad if the computer didn't generate a powerful magnetic field the moment it was switched on. To top it off, owners were advised to start the computers with the tape still in the computer. Little effort was made to fix this beyond a disclaimer on the package itself.

* The Dell Inspiron line was somewhat known for having ''very'' faulty speakers. These usually boil down to two issues. A) The ribbon cable that connects the speakers to the motherboard is very frail, and often comes loose if you move your device too much (did we mention this is a ''laptop'' we're talking about?). B) The headphone lack has a physical switch that turns off the speakers. If you plug in something in to the jack, the speakers turn off. Unplug it, and they turn on. Simple, right? Well, this switch is bound to get stuck at one point or another, and the only way to even get to it is disassemble the damn thing, or by spraying contact cleaner in the port and hoping that the air pressure flips the switch.

* The IBM Deskstar 75GXP, nicknamed the [[FanNickname Death Star]]. While it was a large drive by year-2000 standards, it had a disturbing habit of suddenly failing, taking your data with it. The magnetic coating was of subpar reliability, and came loose easily, causing head crashing that easily strips the magnetic layer off clean. One user with a RAID server setup reported to their RAID controller manufacturer; supposedly, this user was replacing their IBM Deskstars [[http://s3.computerhistory.org/groups/ds-ibm-75gxp-family-20121031.pdf at a rate of 600-800 drives per day]]. There have been many hard drives that have been criticized for various reasons, but the "Death Star" was something truly spectacular for all the wrong reasons.

* The Iomega Zip Disk was a big success undeniably, but user confidence in the drives' reliability was terrorized by the "Click-of-death". Though tens-of-millions of the drives were sold, there were thousands of drive that would suffer misalignment and damage the medium injected into the drive. This would not be horrible by itself necessarily, but Iomega made a big mistake, downplaying the users who complained about drive failures and failing to be sensitive about their lost data.
The Zip's worst problem wasn't even the fact that it could fail and potentially ruin a disk, but that such a ruined disk would go on to ruin whatever drive it was then inserted into. Which would then ruin more disks, which would ruin more drives, et cetera. Effectively a sort of hardware virus, it turned one of the best selling points of the platform (inter-drive compatibility) into its worst point of failure.

** Iomega's previous magnetic storage product, Bernoulli Box, was designed to avert this disaster by using a specific law of physics that makes it [[GeniusProgramming physically impossible for the drive head to make contact with the medium.]] When Iomega designed the Zip disk specification, the Bernoulli effect was overlooked, likely to save costs. Yes, Iomega already had a disk format that was designed to prevent the failures the Zip drives suffered.

* While there's many things that set back the NES Classic Edition (stock issues, inconvenient design choices, tons of alternatives) one glaring flaw it has is its hard drive. Many fans have calculated that the system could easily hold the NES' entire library 10 times over including box art and metadata, and yet it only uses a small fraction of it. While there's many people who would have put the empty space to good use (it's very easy to hack the thing by simply flashing the hard drive and putting whatever you want on it), one has to wonder why they gave it such a massive hard drive only to do next to nothing with it, especially when the games that are already on it are [[SoOkayItsAverage unimpressive as it is]].

* Microsoft's [=XBox=] consoles aren't exempt from these either:

* In a similar case to the ''Transformers'' GPS above, '''Creator/{{LEGO}}''' also fumbled up their own plastic around '07, which resulted in nearly all of the lime-green colored pieces becoming ridiculously fragile. This affected the ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' sets of that era greatly, which were already prone to breaking due to the faulty sculpting of the ball-socket joints. Since that line of sets had more lime-colored pieces than usual, it is needless to say that fans were not amused with the ordeal, as it meant that they ''couldn't take apart and rebuild their LEGO sets''. Reportedly, some of these lime pieces broke right at the figures' first assembly.

Of note, it was not rare for the device to come fresh from the box in such a state of disrepair that ''highly trained specialists'' couldn't get it working -- for example, it could be ''soldered directly to the cartridge port'' and ''still'' display a connection error. This, by the way, is exactly what happened when Creator/JamesRolfe tried to review the system.

** Heat issues are also bad for [=MacBook=] Pros. Not so much for casual users, but very much so for heavy processor load applications. Since the MBP is pretty much ''de rigeur'' for musicians (and almost as much for graphic designers and moviemakers), this is a rather annoying problem since Photoshop with a lot of images or layers or any music software with a large number of tracks WILL drive your temperature through the roof. Those who choose to game with a MBP have it even worse -- ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' will start to cook your MBP within 30 minutes of playing. Especially if you have a high room temperature. The solution? Get the free software programs Temperature Monitor and [=SMCFanControl=]. Keep an eye on your temps and be very liberal with upping the fans: the only downsides to doing so are more noise, a drop in battery time, and possible fan wear: all FAR better than your main system components being fried or worn down early.

Every once in a while, we encounter an item with a design flaw so blatant that one can only wonder how no one thought to fix that before releasing it to the public. Whether it be the result of [[DidntThinkThisThrough unforeseeable consequences of a certain design choice]], [[CuttingCorners cost-cutting measures gone too far]], [[ChristmasRushed rushing a product to meet a certain release date]] at the cost of skipping important testing, or simply [[CreatorsApathy pure laziness on the creators' parts]], these design flaws can result in consequences ranging from unintentional hilarity, to mild annoyance, to rendering the product unusable, to potentially even putting the users' lives in danger.

* '''Breath Blasters''', a novelty toy from the 1980s which were designed to spray horrible scents in people's faces. Never mind the obnoxious premise, but the packaging claimed that the material used in making the scents were non-toxic... [[BlatantLies which was untrue]], as large amounts of the vapours could lead to poisoning. There were also many reports of people actually getting ill over long exposure to them, leading to the toys to be banned.

* The '''[[Series/{{CSI}} CSI]] Fingerprint Examination Kit''', released circa 2007, which included powders for children to analyze fingerprints with that were found to contain alarming levels of ''asbestos''. Since inhalation of it can lead to respiratory problems, including '''lung cancer''', the kit was almost immediately recalled.

* '''Flubber''', a Silly Putty-like mixture of synthetic rubber and mineral oil released by Hasbro in 1963 to promote the film ''Son of Flubber''. A poor mixing of the combination was extremely toxic, though, as was the first batch released to the public, and many who played with it came down with serious fevers and rashes. Hasbro immediately recalled the Flubber and prepared to dispose of it. However, when the company tried burying the stuff at sea ''it floated to the top'', and when they tried burning the goop '''it wouldn't ignite''' (plenty of noxious black smoke, though). Eventually, Hasbro buried what remained near their Rhode Island factory, and paved a parking lot over it. An [[UrbanLegends Urban Legend]] claims that if you look closely at the cracks in that parking lot on hot days, you can see the Flubber oozing up... [[NightmareFuel Sweet dreams!]]
* The '''Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory''' was a standard toy lab set sold in the early 50s, except for one catch: it contained actual samples of uranium. Yes, uranium, the metallic and '''radioactive''' element from our periodic table. It wasn't actually recalled - it was so expensive to make (considering the price of a fissile material that you could make a homemade bomb with if you bought enough of them) that the toy company considered it a liability and stopped making it, according to ''Series/{{QI}}''.

* The 2003 '''[[WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls Powerpuff Girls]] Girl's Makeup Kit''', which contained pink lotion that was contaminated with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, not something you're going to want your little girl to be slathering on her face, as it can be deadly for children with damaged immune systems, and even in a healthy child can lead to eye abscesses and ear infections...and, in rare cases, '''meningitis'''. Sounds more like a evil plot by the Amoeba Boys than a kid's toy.

* In August of 2016, during its big marketing push for UsefulNotes/TheOlympics in Rio, [[UsefulNotes/McDonalds McDonald's]] sold the '''STEP iT! Activity Band''' in its Happy Meals across North America in an attempt to encourage kids to exercise more by measuring how many steps they take. Unfortunately, the product was so cheaply made that many kids (over ''70'', to be precise) reported suffering skin irritation from wearing the things with at least ''seven'' receiving ''burns and blisters'', forcing [=McD's=] to recall the product within ''eight days'' of its launch. [[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37187666]]