Pointless products that will never exist but you wish they did

[ditalini]

I live on the 2nd floor and have a shared washing line out the back. I want a clip on thing that I can attach to an item of washing (say the thickest part of a pair of jeans, the bit that takes the longest to dry) and it'll send an alert to my phone when the load is ready to take in.

This will never exist because it's pointless for almost everyone in the world but I wish it did.

Any more?

I want an attractive, tasteful lightpull, not garishly painted, not so flimsy that it flings about when pulled and not heavy enough to take chunks out of my wall, not so tiny that it's hard to get hold of but not utterly massive like it's a school toilet flush pull handle on a chain, in the shape of a mouse, where the cord is the mouse's tail. And not Disney themed. You'd think this would exist. It doesn't.

I feel like both of our products could be good college projects for some bright young thing. Where they send the final result to us for free.

Slow release Calpol patches

Excellent idea.

Technically I could 3D print the kind of thing I want, as DP had a thing for 3D printing a while back and we still have all the kit, but the software packages required just defeated me 😅 (and ridgy plastic isn't exactly my idea of tasteful or suitably weighted).

That's a good one! I feel like nurofen could actually do this though because can't you get ibuprofen gel? I don't know whether paracetamol can be delivered through the skin.

I think this one is a definite goer - so much better than trying to persuade your child to not spit out the calpol.

A machine that you chuck all members of the households clean socks in and it shoots them out matched up.

I would pay upto £500 for that.

A foot tickler.

Not a massager - an actual foot tickling machine. I accept that might be a bit niche.

An app where you could post a full length photo of yourself and it could show you what clothes posed by pictures of tall, skinny models would look like on your actual body!

Genius idea! I'd use it and you'd only need a couple, not for the whole load of washing.

Mine would be a bechemel sauce powder. So like a stock cube but for adding to milk to make a good flavoured white sauce.

A walk through body dryer.

A device which puts everyone's clothes away neatly in the right place. And can remember whose stuff is whose.

My local fancy leisure pool actually had this for a while!

There's a lot of good ideas on this thread - I would definitely be up for a really good quality bechamel sauce powder.

Equipment so you could home valet your car to an actual decent standard.

The Smart House of the future will definitely need to have all of these laundry improvement features (especially the sock one)

I'd definitely pay for an app like that. Why aren't clothing manufacturers getting on this? Such a saving in returns, packaging, labour...it would be brilliant!

Particularly if you could also store pics of stuff you'd bought, so you could see what stuff would look like with your existing wardrobe.

I want a baking tray with a pattern that lights up when it’s hot so I remember not to burn myself after preheating it in the oven.

Utter, utter degeneracy. I fear for the future of humanity.

Slimming chocolate - the more you eat, the slimmer you get.

I want an ombre duvet cover in the colours of a sunset going from golden yellow to deepest blue, with a silhouette of a beautiful tree on it. I have scoured the internet and not found anything that even comes close.

Problem is, outside future fantasy tech like teleportation technology or some kind of nanobots, there's are only two sensible ways I can think of doing that.

1. Preventing the body taking up calories from both the chocolate and other foods, which would probably have similar effects to most other foods which substitute for fats or sugars and are low calorie due to indigestibility (like that Olestra fat substitute, or some polyols), or the weightless drug orlistat that stops you absorbing fats. Generally, the effects are about as horrible as you'd expect from masses of oil passing through your gut unchanged, or from there being suddenly a lot more available material that you can't digest but your gut bacteria can, for them to munch through and produce gas from.

1. Make your body burn more calories than it normally would. This is essentially what the illegal weightloss drug DNP does — it messes with your cells so that they burn more calories than they need to. Sounds great but apparently it makes you feel horrendous, you lose control of your body temperature, and also you can die.

But if you ever find this chocolate, please let me know anyway

Ds (9) wants an ice cream van app so he can see if one is coming and get his money ready on time instead of running out of the house in his socks with a pocketful of shrapnel from the change jar.

Something I can put on my face before bed that will wash, cleanse, serum & moisturise for me. Please

Even just an attachment for your hoover that has a very small tipped nozzle like the size of a drinking straw. Considering how much use cars get from muddy outdoor gear, more so than any other place in your home, they are not designed to be kept clean efficiently are they?

I would pay good money for that!

Some sort of amazing shampoo/conditioner product that you only have to use once a year tops - and your hair remains looking nice and you don’t get a sore scalp or anything from not washing your hair.