There are many bad inventions out there. But since I have only had 20 minutes to research this topic, I'm going to go with the baby cage and hula chair.
The baby cage was used by parents in the 1920s who had limited space in their apartments for their baby to sit and play. You installed the cage to a wall outside a window and put your baby in it. As you may have guessed, it proved extremely dangerous, as the cage was supported only on one side and usually attached to a window more than one storey above the ground. The baby cage was mostly used in London, where crowded housing was an issue. It must have been traumatic for the babies; I am disturbed just by using baby and cage in the same sentence. Needless to say, the baby cage is no longer in production.
The hula chair is supposed to give you an abdominal workout while you sit in your office chair and work. It supposedly does all the work while you get all the benefits. In other words, a rip-off. It has a swivelly kind of seat that replicates a hula hoop, and in theory is supposed to give you the same type of exercise that you would get swivelling your hips with a hula hoop. Obviously, it's a gimmick. And for anyone gullible enough to consider buying one –– it doesn't work, people. But Ellen Degeneres did use it on her show as an example of a bad infomercial and the company got great PR, so it probably made buckets of money just from people buying it as a gag gift.
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