The Worst Things For Sale

SantaCam is a fake video camera you set out before Christmas to intimidate your children into “being good” lest their presents be revoked. It has a blinking red LED for realism, and it’s a great way to teach your kids that privacy is an illusion. Depending on their beliefs, the children subjected to SantaCam would generally believe one of three things:

1. An omniscient, remote authoritarian is watching them 24 hours a day.

2. Their parents do not grant them privacy, and are willing to surveill them continuously to deny them privacy.

3. Their parents value compliance over truth.

None of these are healthy ways to interact with your children. That’s why SantaCam has such poor – ah, never mind, it mostly has five-star reviews.

These bath salts have the fragrance of roast beef, a scent not traditionally associated with bathing or beauty products. It’s supposed to be a prank of some sort, I guess, but on the other hand, there’s apparently a market for bacon-scented mustaches.

The idea of a grilled-cheese toaster seems appealing, even if you’ve mastered the art of combining bread and cheese in a pan on the stove. Unfortunately, the customer reviews are overwhelmingly negative, with some saying it doesn’t get hot enough to melt the cheese, and others saying that one side burns the bread while the other doesn’t toast at all, or that it arrived physically and functionally broken.

You could buy some toaster bags made of woven fiberglass to make grilled cheese in a normal toaster, if you can’t let go of the idea of toastering a grilled cheese. Or you can roll your cheese-squares up and stick them down into the holes in this Hot Dog Toaster, a countertop device which allows you to push hot dogs and buns down into it to cook them. Nothing is real, everything is permitted.

The idea of a t-rex hatching from an egg-shaped candle is cute, but the problem lies in the fact that before you burn it, you’ve only got an egg made of wax. After you burn it, you’ve just got a dinosaur. Only the transition state, the dinosaur emerging from the wax as the candle burns, is interesting, but it only happens once, and for $45.

“But that’s the beauty of it! It only happens once!” Yeah, well, go see a local band play four times, or go for a walk in the woods infinite times for free.

If you’re fixated on the idea of burning a candle to reveal something inside, PyroPet was first to market with this idea, and the metal cat skeleton inside might be worth the cost and process, if you’re into tiny cat skeletons.

I’m honestly impressed by how weirdly decrepit this roll of printed toilet paper looks. The manufacturer doesn’t give any details, but it could have easily been printed in the 60s and been sitting on the shelf for fifty years. It is, as you’d imagine, too expensive to buy as a joke.

If you haven’t yet seen this “6.5 foot” bear, it’s evident from only one of the manufacturer’s photos (and the numerous customer reviews) that the manufacturer attempts to fools the eye with perspective, and the bear actually has long, dangly legs that make up about half of its height.

If you have already seen the long-legged bear, then this actually-nine-foot-tall teddy bear is worth seeing, if not for the bear itself, then for the manufacturer’s insistence that “you will receive brand new merchandise (that has never been outdoors).” I wasn’t thinking it had been outdoors until you said that, guys.

Like The Dad Bag, a fanny-pack designed to make it look like your gut is hanging out from under your shirt, “Sexy Christmas Sweatshirt” gives you the chance to outerwear a caucasian skin covered in hair, and, this time, Christmas tattoos.