Examples of "a flashy feature that has limited usability for victory" in Western Animation.
- Many things in Adventure Time can be considered this. Two examples are a Gauntlet Dock and a power gauntlet that is too big to carry.
- The evil genius Karl from All Hail King Julien is fond of a large laser gun that can only be fired once every several minutes. This seems to be an acceptable drawback for him though, as he thinks so highly of himself that only someone trying to use the gun against him would need more than one shot.
- An episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force sees Shake extolling the eHelmet, a helmet that has cell phone and text-messaging capabilities (and, as Carl shows, can display some really out-there porn), but requires a really heavy battery pack to operate it. It's little wonder Frylock sticks to his small, lightweight cell phone, which does all that and has a 14 Megapixel camera. Shake still tries to one-up Frylock with a camera attachment which comes with IV drips, as at that point it is so heavy Shake cannot move at all. Shake, being too prideful to accept his eHelmet is a flop ("The mouth is a primitive hole that will soon be phased out!"), tries to counter Frylock's MP3 player, which has space for 10,000 songs, with an "e-iano", which can play every song out there by converting it to a single ragtime tune. There's also no way to turn off the e-iano, so you must buy a silencing cover or add the eToms to drown it out. At that point, the weight of the eHelmet + attachments causes Shake to sink into the ground, so he adds a pair of robot legs. Not only do they suspend the user upside-down, Carl's eHelmet legs begin humping Shake's (probably because of all the porn), prompting him to order an Artificial Intelligence attachment. Said AI is at the level of a four-year-old, and while it does repel Carl's eHelmet's advances, it also likes to go swimming. And the eHelmets aren't waterproof.Meatwad: The moral of this story is that technology... and that nice yellow padded chair in the living room is mine from now own. I call it.
- Arcane features a gang called the Firelights, led by Ekko, are introduced in Act 2 Ep. 2 as users of a hoverboard technology, which they continue to use throughout the show. In Episode 9, when Ekko brings Heimerdinger into the Firelights' base, one thing that is touched on is how Heimerdinger asks about why they use hoverboards for transport instead of other, "surely more efficient and safer" methods, to which Ekko responds that you have to give people not just survival, but also life, describing a philosophy that is represented by the hoverboards.
- Archer: Sterling Archer himself is an example. When in the field he's single-handedly captured an entire space station, defeated a Cuban hit squad armed with automatic weapons using only two Molotov cocktails, an ice scoop, and a broom handle, and sneaked past an entire armed force of enemy agents while a liter low on blood and drunk. His behavior at literally everything else, however, makes his inhuman abilities wildly impractical, to the point that he's been deliberately shot three times by his own coworkers for how much he irritates, belittles, and berates them.
- In Skytanic, the team travel on the Excelsior, an airship that combines the luxury of a cruise liner with air travel...and takes two days to go from New York to London which is its only route. Archer openly laughs on "who's going to waste two days on a trip they can make in six hours?" As it happens, Archer is dead right as the company is about to go under for that exact same reason which drives the captain (who'd invested his 401K into it) to bomb the ship in a desperate money-making scheme.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Appa's armor from "Day of the Black Sun" certainly makes him look intimidating, but it also weighs him down and tires him out quickly as the armor is very heavy.
- Parodied in the episode "Sokka's Master" when, while looking about a weapon shop, Aang is impressed by and puts on a large, intimidating set of armor
covered with spikes, chains, skulls, and a gauntlet clearly inspired by Knightmare that looks like it was designed by a 9-year-old... and almost immediately tips over backward, as it is too heavy and Aang doesn't have the strength to move it. For bonus impracticality and awesomeness he wanted to add a “wind sword,” which is just a sword handle he can airbend through, using it as a blade. - Sequel The Legend of Korra has the Colossus, a giant, hundred foot talk walking giant with a cannon powered by spirit vines on it. The weapon can obliterate anything it hits. But the weapon is nothing more than glorified artillery: It can only hit stationary or large targets. One person got inside and could make it self-destruct by hitting the interior with lightning, while everyone else simply provided him cover against the troops inside.
- Parodied in the episode "Sokka's Master" when, while looking about a weapon shop, Aang is impressed by and puts on a large, intimidating set of armor
- Batman Beyond: One episode introduces a Powered Armor Bruce made in a last-ditch attempt to keep being Batman even after his aging body could no longer keep up. While it granted Super-Strength and increased endurance, his heart condition couldn't handle the physical strain (why Terry never uses the suit isn't made clear however). When Bruce comes to Terry's rescue at the end of the episode wearing the armour, Terry is filled with dread rather than relief because of this.
- Bob's Burgers: Bob's "Burgers of the Day" are the aspect of his restaurant he hopes to attract customers with. On paper, they're an amazing idea, creating a different burger with a unique ingredient and demonstrating Bob's skills in cooking. In practice, it's not a very financially sound idea to do every day, mostly because Bob will need to buy a new ingredient every morning and the fact he never repeats them means if one person liked that specific burger but doesn't like the next one will be out of luck. He also insists on coming up with a pun name for them, rather than calling something simple, like calling it the "Glory Glory Jalapeno Burger" instead of something like "The Jalapeno Burger". One episode showed him having a creative block that prevented him from making such a burger as well as a name for it. Another episode revealed Bob barely sold any such burgers a whole month, meaning he spent a lot of money on ingredients for nothing. It should be noted though that Teddy is the only person who unironically likes it, most people are just indifferent to the names or the burgers themselves.
- One of Ben Tennyson's alien forms in Ben 10: Alien Force is the awesome Alien X, capable of reshaping the very fabric of the universe at a whim. But there's a catch: Alien X has three separate personalities, Serena, the voice of love and compassion; Bellicus, the voice of rage and aggression; and Ben, the voice of reason (and when Ben is the voice of reason, you know there's trouble). In order to perform any action at all, up to and including speech and physical movement, two of those three personalities must agree to do so. Considering the other two personalities have been arguing for an eternity before Ben's arrival and aren't likely to be convinced by a 15-year-old, this doesn't happen very often. Nor is simply picking one of them to agree with going to help much; they've got millions of years worth of disputes that they want to resolve first before getting to the current issue. For example, when he arrives, they present him with the question of whether or not they should save the dinosaurs. To them, this is not an impractical question: they could reverse time and save the dinosaurs... although Ben, having evolved from creatures who thrived in the wake of the dinosaurs' extinction, would create a paradox (no, not the time traveller) if he did so. Ben and his friends soon rig a lock on the Omnitrix to prevent it from calling up Alien X again by accidentnote .
- Ripjaws, while really strong with a powerful bite to match, can't stay out of water (or at least without water nearby) for too long or he'll dry out and faint. Not to mention that if he is having a battle underwater, and the Omnitrix times out, Ben risks drowning. However, Ripjaws' species become amphibious as they age and by Ben 10: Ultimate Alien he lost this weakness.
- The Omnitrix was this throughout most of the original series. The most powerful weapon ever created? Check. Capable of adapting to any situation? Check. Nearly indestructible? Check. Unreliable, questionable battery lifenote , and a target for the most dangerous criminals in the universe? Um... check.
- The Ultimatrix in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien was even more awesome and impractical than the Omnitrix, as it gave each of Ben's aliens a Super Mode but at the cost of key functions like DNA repair alongside several glitches (such as said Ultimate aliens gaining consciousness and trying to kill him), leading Azmuth to confiscate and destroy it in the Grand Finale in favor of an updated Omnitrix.
- The updated Omnitrix in Ben 10: Omniverse was designed to be the best version, but it comes off as even more impractical than either the original or the Ultimatrix. For starters, the watch is very sensitive to Ben's touch, causing him to unintentionally get the wrong alien or negatively affect the timer to change him back at a random time. Moreover, it's also been given a randomizer, which doesn't assist in anyway, even for its original intended use of making the wearer an ambassador to different races across the universe. It also does not display holograms or silhouettes of the aliens Ben cycles through, instead showing small icons of their faces that make it difficult to distinguish who is who, especially during critical situations. Why Azmuth made the watch difficult to use for the one being in the universe who's supposed to wear it, or why he doesn't bother making adjustments, is anyone's guess.
- Heimlich's pathetically small butterfly wings at the end of A Bug's Life. But then, that's the joke!
- Count Duckula's Castle Duckula — It has the ability to magically transport itself and its inhabitants anywhere in the world, but it always returns to Transylvania at dawn, Eastern Transylvanian standard time. Naturally this leads to some missed flights leaving Duckula and his staff stranded. Not to mention the castle itself often misinterprets its master's commands and flies to the wrong place.
- In the Doug episode "Doug Flies A Kite", Doug feels he and his father will be humiliated when his father decides to keep the kite they're making simple while he hears how extravagant everyone else's kites will be. Turns out, Doug's kite was able to do awesome stunts because of its simple design while all the other kites weren't able to get off the ground.
- Futurama, to an extent, depicts all Mom's robots as being this, but especially Bender. Sure, his telescoping limbs, durability, and immense strength mean he's able to perform physical feats that the other crew members can't... but he's a such a sociopathic, self-absorbed Jerkass that he not only regularly refuses to help, but even actively works against the crew on occasion (such as stealing the precious atom they were meant to be delivering and steering the ship into a deadly electrical storm just so he can get high off it). On a more direct level, he needs copious amounts of alcohol to run properly and belches out huge amounts of pollution.
- Lampshaded in "Fear of a Bot Planet":Bender: You guys think robots are just tools to make your lives easier!
Fry: Aren't they?
Bender: I've never made anyone's life easier and you know it!
- Lampshaded in "Fear of a Bot Planet":
- On Goof Troop, this was a running theme for "Pegleg" Pete throughout the show, with a super-duper home entertainment system being one of his "follies." His most notably one came in episode "O-R-V, I-N-V-U", with his custom RV, the "Pete-Mobile": High-tech, flashy, and BIG, but unfortunately also miswired, hazardous, had several impractical features, and it eventually started to fall apart towards the end of the episode.
- Soos from Gravity Falls turns the broken cuckoo clock in 'Fixin' It With Soos: Cuckoo Clock' into something that wasn't really a clock anymore◊.
- Inspector Gadget:
- Gadget himself. He's got an infinite amount of gadgets that are great for any situation. The irony is that this stuff was given to an oblivious buffoon.. It also doesn't help that in later episodes they tend to malfunction constantly.
- Penny's computer book, while a do-anything MacGuffin, is rather big and has limited storage options. This is probably why she switches to an iPod-like virtual version of it in the sequel series.
- Inside Job (2021): The cloning department has the DNA of just about every famous person in their records and can make as many copies as the company needs. Problem is, there aren't many situations where you would actually need a small army of Rasputins or Avril Lavignes. Also, as Reagan notes, refrigeration and storage costs a lot, so the department is more trouble than it's worth.
- Invader Zim:
- The Megadoomer a Walking Tank that has super advanced cloaking capabilities and some of the most powerful weaponry from the Vort race, custom designed to tailor for the Irken military. Problem is, the cloaking device doesn't cloak the pilot, the built-in battery is dead, and the weapons can't be fired due to massive power draw. To quote Zim: "...Oh that's STUPID!" Another thing to note is that, even if the Megadoomer's cloaking device did cloak the pilot, it would still be useless as a stealth weapon because the machine is so bulky and heavy that it leaves a trail of destruction and footprints in its wake.
- "Battle of the Planets": The Martians worked themselves into extinction turning Mars into a giant spaceship. When Zim asks the Martian hologram why they did that, it says "Because it's cool!" And indeed, once construction had finished (along with the Martians) Zim actually manages to use it quite effectively, only being defeated by another spaceship planet and his own mishandling of the controls than actual fault in Mars.
- Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: In "Beyond the Valley of the Dogs", Kipo's new super-strong oversized limb sounds and looks awesome, but suddenly growing such a huge appendage would throw off a person's balance — as evidenced by how Kipo stumbles through the following fight scene, only managing to get a handle on this latest transformation after being captured.
- The Modifyers: You'd think that having a spy ring that lets Xero create holographic disguises would be effective, and it would be... IF it didn't keep falling off due to being two sizes too big for her finger. Plus, it makes a loud beep whenever her chief calls her, which he usually does while she's undercover. Guess how her cover identity gets blown?
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- "Inspiration Manifestation": The puppet stage Rarity initially made may have been aesthetically appealing and elaborate, but it was rejected by the puppet-master due to being difficult to move around and being too cramped on the inside for him and his puppets. After learning a powerful magic spell, she then goes Drunk with Power and starts turning everything into Awesome, But Impractical versions of themselves (although the "awesome" bit only applies to Rarity's point of view), such as turning Applejack's wheelbarrow into a golden, diamond-encrusted version that is too heavy to move, turning a birdhouse into a mansion that the bird gets lost in, and replacing the streets with paths of gold that reflect light, blinding those who walk on it.
- "Sonic Rainboom": Twilight comes up with a spell that will give her non-pegasus friends wings, so they can join Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy for the Youngest Fliers competition in Cloudsdale. Unfortunately the spell is so draining, she only manages to cast it once, on Rarity, and has to find a simpler cloud-walking spell for the rest of them. Also, said magic wings are made from gossamer and morning dew, and they looks stunning but are incredibly fragile.
- Twilight Sparkle is famous for trying awesome but impractical spells to solve problems, which more often than not prolong or worsen the problem by being so impractical, time and time and time and time again. It actually wasn't until Season 4 that one of these stunts actually worked as intended.
- Discord, the Big Bad of the first part of Season 2 (and an Anti-Hero Sixth Ranger after that), is a Reality Warper who could likely just Teleport Spam most of his problems away if he wanted. However, given his Hedonistic personality, he just can't seem to resist screwing with them as much as possible, usually with elaborate visual gags. This has gotten him into trouble on more than a few occasions.
- In The Powerpuff Girls, the Professor builds a giant robot called Dynamo after seeing the girls get hurt while fighting a monster, so as to protect them. However, the girls state that they don't really need Dynamo since they have superpowers. Truth be told, Dynamo does end up stopping a monster the girls couldn't defeat by themselves, but it also ends up destroying most of Townsville, so the Mayor orders them never to use it again.
- Buttercup thinks her tongue curling ability is an awesome power because Blossom and Bubbles cannot duplicate it like they could her other powers. But everyone else — even the narrator — thinks it's lame.
- In Rick and Morty, the President of the United States tries to keep up with Rick's inventions by creating his own version of Rick's portal gun. This new teleportation technology works, but it requires a whole squadron of helicopters to spend the time and resources to manually airlift the portal platform to its destination just so the President can step through it. Sure, it keeps him safe from having to travel there with the military, but he still has to wait for them to arrive at the destination and then ignite the portal with a lighter. The technology would honestly be better used to replace airports... if going through the portals didn't also give you cancer.
- She-Ra: Princess of Power: Glimmer's light magic is very powerful and has a wide range of useful effects but her magic is so taxing on her that using it in any way tends to render her too exhausted to do anything else.
- Sofia the First: The chocolate fountain on Amber's go-carriage and the cannons at James' may look cool but their weight slows them down.
- SpongeBob SquarePants has Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy's invisible boatmobile... that they struggle to find more than once, since it's invisible. Barnacle Boy has also accidentally, and painfully, sat on the gear lever ("I told you we should have got the automatic"), and has been burned by the tailpipe while unknowingly standing behind it.
- The Technodrome from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon wasn't just awesome — it was badass. It looked both cool and formidable, was capable of surviving in any environment from outer space to under the ocean, and was equipped at various points with a time machine and a fully fledged robot army. One problem, though — there was no power source capable of powering the Technodrome for any practical length of time, making the vehicle essentially worthless. The two biggest storylines over the course of the series were Shredder's attempts at killing the Turtles and trying to jump start the Technodrome.
- In Turtles Forever, once the 200X Shredder applies some of his own technology, he's able to unleash the machine's true potential and nearly destroys the entire multiverse with it. Even more awesome is that it becomes the only thing powerful enough to stop the super-sized Shredder!
- Beast Boy's T. rex form in Teen Titans (2003). Due to Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality, its sole combat techniques were to get stuck under low bridges and crash through floors not rated to handle large dinosaurs. Until the series Finale, where they finally had a massive fight scene where he got to tail-whip a lot of baddies. Still couldn't show him using the teeth, though.
- The title Humongous Mecha of Titan Maximum. A good idea in theory, yes. But, there's a few hitches. It's ludicrously expensive, piloted by half a team of idiots, and usually eschews even more expensive weaponry to, in Palmer's words "Punch the fuck out of it!" It's small wonder Titan's government retired it at the first chance.
- The Transformers: Depending on the situation, the combiners (teams for Transformers who could combine into a super robot) could be this. Like in the toyline and comics, the problem with combiners is that they tend to be Dumb Muscle or Ax-Crazy, due to the difficulties on fusing the disparate minds of their component Transformers into one. One of the finest examples takes place in the episode B.O.T., when a frustrated Starscream yells at Megatron that "your stupid warrior (refering to Bruticus, the combined form of the Combaticons) is just standing there!", completely ignoring weapons fire from the Autobots but not fighting back either because no one told him to.
- The so-called citybots Metroplex and Trypticon are so gigantic note they're rarely called into action, partially because there's almost never a reason to call them in (unless it's to counter the other citybot, because any other reason would be overkill), and partially because their massive size also means they require huge amounts of energy to function properly.
- In The Venture Bros., a series set in a universe that runs on Awesome, But Impractical, one particular item stands out: The Monarch's Battle Panoply. It is a solid suit of complete body armor that happens to restrict 100% of his body movements and makes him spin around uncontrollably in flight, shooting lasers everywhere. To deploy it in the field, two people had to help him don the armor, and then his henchmen had to move him around like a statue. One henchman even died deploying the wings. Naturally, this didn't end too well for him. Justified somewhat in that it had never been tested.
- In a complete inversion (i.e., Boring Yet Practical), as well as a case of Chekhov's Guns, we have the wings worn by the Monarch's henchmen. For nearly two seasons, they show no purpose other than being part of the costume and the butterfly motif. During the final episode of Season 2, however, it turns out the wings can fly. You heard right: the wings actually double as jet packs, allowing the henchman to fight off Phantom Limb's army. However, after this, it is never brought up again. A goofier aspect of this is brought up in Season 4; the wings are constantly extended, and every door in the Monarch's cocoon base tapers to a point at the top. The henchmen can barely walk around without their wings getting in the way.
- Rusty himself once designed a Laser Blade but ended up scrapping it before he could get it to work because the military pointed out they don't use swords anymore. He attempted to sell it to Kenner (the company that makes Star Wars toys), but they didn't go for it either as it cost two million in parts alone.
- This pops up quite a bit in the show. Brock frequently avoids using any Bond-esque spy gadgets in favor of his Bowie knife, explaining they either rarely work or are too specialized to be really useful. In an early episode, Dr. Venture invents a Lotus-Eater Machine and winds up sealing Brock and the boys inside it. In yet another episode, Venture needs to use a shrink ray his father invented (to win a bet) only to find it's fallen into disrepair and he's not a skilled enough scientist to fix it. In The Movie, Rusty tries to sell an Alexa-style virtual assistant device but makes so many "improvements" to it that it ends up costing more to produce than they were going to sell them for, with Pete White telling him he "Blue Monday'd it".
- Played with in "Careers in Science" with the Gargantua-1's "Problem Light", it's a diagnostics system that's composed of a single red light that turns on when anything on the huge station malfunctions without giving any specific information about what malfunctioned. Subverted 7 seasons later when it turns out that the actual purpose of the device is plot-important.
- Lord Hater's H.A.T.E.R.V. (pronounced "Hate-RV) from Wander over Yonder. It's a multi-terrain car loaded to the brim with weapons and intended to wow Hater's crush Lord Dominator. Unfortunately, Hater built it himself without help from his engineers, so it came out as a barely functional death trap, with half it's features nonfunctional or misfiring. It only gets used with any success twice; first as a quick but risky transport for another far more useful weapon and second as a glorified battle ram that psychotically bashes through a group of enemies before getting totaled.
