Gadgets. Is it a bloke thing?
I started young. When Sony launched the Walkman, it wasn't long before copies came to market. Some good, some not so.
I bought a Binatone. It worked just fine for a few months before wow+flutter made everything sound like a tremolo effects pedal had been added, then the volume began to fluctuate, so it sounded like a Leslie speaker.
More recently:-
An LED torch that worked for all of 5 minutes before the threads on the casing smeared under the spring pressure from the batteries. That cost 1.99 from a petrol station. Impulse purchase. Still, the batteries must be good?. No. Yucking fuseless. I essentially paid 1.99 for a white LED.

An Eken M001 tablet, second hand from ebay. Actually quite good aside from the dreadful resistive screen, dog slow processor, lack of memory, lack of USB port and after a months casual use, a battery life of 20 minutes. I'd stick Linux on it and run it as a photo frame if it didn't get worryingly hot during charging and use. Not quite good at all. Shit really.

A battery powered tin opener. I damaged my right hand and couldn't use a normal tin opener. Trying left handed proved impossible for my ill co-ordinated self, so wifey bought that to help me out. It took about 2 minutes to open a tin. It lasted all of 3 months. I went back to using the 'G.I' opener I use when camping. Pity I didn't remember I had it before that pile of pants was purchased.

My children love things that beep. I'm not so enamoured. Cube world, pocket pets, Ben 10 wrist thingys. All died. Very limited play value, very short life. One trick ponies where the trick become tedious rapidly. Pester power to buy them, then will it break or will they get bored before the batteries die.

Alba portable CD player. Works fine from its mains adaptor and is supposed to be able to charge Ni-Cad and NiMh batteries. It does, to about 50% of their capacity. It then drains them in about an hour.

Cheapo MP3 player. Small, 2GB capacity, good sound. No support for directories, which makes having more than 1 album on it pointless. It reset itself to Chinese for the menu. The manual made no mention of how to reset to English. I took it to my local chinese takeaway and they reset it to English for me. It then took to losing all data. I took a hammer to it.

Wifey keeps buying crap from the Kleen-eze catalogue. She bought me a vibrating neck massage collar. It was so loud and uncomfortable as to be unusable, So poorly made, we couldn't even use it as an impromptu flange flicker.

When I dropped my slide scanner, I bought a cheapo one from Maplins. Took it back.

An endoscope/borescope from ebay ( theme here ) with a 10mm head. Absolutely useless picture quality. It died on first use as the lens wasn't oil resistant. Why make a borescope, advertised for use with engines, which isn't oil resistant?. Got my money back on that one.

Universal remote which only operates the television. Bluetooth earpiece/mic, boxed as Nokia. Having used a -genuine- Nokia bluetooth earpiece/mic previously, I thought this'd be fine. I was ripped off. It was a cheap, shit knock-off.

Non genuine Sony playstation memory cards. All aside from a Memor32 have proven shit.
( moonbadger Doesn't judge a fish by its ability to climb trees, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 17:34, 3 replies)

ah now you've already mentioned Kleeneezee I don't have to
I am usually optimistic about cheap knockoffs but I too have had my share of disappointments... which will go into my QOTW reply :-)
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 29 Sep 2011, 18:29, closed)

he he he
Have a click for ' impromptu flange flicker' made me think of Tiswas!!
(the_icks has the sweet essence of giraffe, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 19:32, closed)

You get a click for writing such a comprehensive list

(IHateSprouts is baking a huge pie shaped like an enormous pie, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 21:02, closed)