Often, scientific studies are meant to advance our understanding of the world, providing us with irreplaceable tools to solve our daily problems. Occasionally, though, science goes beyond the necessary and enters the realm of the ridiculous just because the scientists didn’t have anything better to do that day.

Ever hear a child ask stupid questions like: “What if birds pooped lying down?” Although most of us would laugh and ignore those questions, some scientists make a serious face and say, “Well, let’s find out.”

To know what we’re talking about, here are some of the most hilariously unnecessary scientific studies ever conducted.

10 How Different Are Apples And Oranges Really?

We’ve been comfortably using the supposed differences between apples and oranges in arguments at parties ever since someone came up with the simile ” . . . like comparing apples and oranges.” It makes sense, too, as they look and taste quite different and it serves the purpose of the argument well. That clearly didn’t sit well with surgeon James E. Barone, who decided to take a closer look at the whole thing.

As it turns out, according to an elaborate paper that was presented at the Connecticut Society of American Board Surgeons, apples and oranges are actually quite similar. After carrying out experiments—presumably hunched over their work desks for hours and looking all serious—they concluded that the only difference between apples and oranges was in their color and type of seeds. Otherwise, they might as well be the same fruit.

Thanks to them, we’re back to having no phrase to compare two seemingly unrelated things in casual conversations.^[1]

9 How Do Shrimps Fare Walking On A Treadmill?

What do you think when you look at shrimp?

For the foodies, it may be all about their texture and what they could be paired with. For the casual observer, they may look like just another one of the countless marine species that have no significant impact on our lives. For the scientists who carried out this study, though, the first question that came to their minds was: “So what if we put them on a treadmill?”

Under the guise of studying the effects of stress on marine life when they were only trying to decisively answer a ridiculous question by one of their kids, a couple of scientists injected some shrimp with bacterial infections and put them on a tiny underwater treadmill to see what would happen.

In a result that would not surprise—or even interest—anyone anywhere whatsoever, they concluded that uninfected shrimp performed better than their infected counterparts. The best (or worst) part? The study got $682,570 of taxpayer funding from the National Science Foundation.^[2]

8 Is It Better To Smash An Empty Or Full Beer Bottle On Someone’s Head?

Anyone who has ever been in a bar fight would remember the things that were going through his head at the time: “What’s happening?” “Am I bleeding?” “How will I get home?”

These are probably the most common things, though we can surely say that the science of what kind of beer bottles you should use to smash someone’s head wasn’t one of them. For the scientists who went forward and conducted that exact study, however, it was a question worth answering.

They took full as well as empty half-liter beer bottles and conducted a stress test on them in a drop tower, which tells us that they really prepared for this. As they found out, empty beer bottles broke at 40 J of energy and full ones at 30 J.

If that sounds like a significant difference, it’s really not. Both of those are enough to fracture the human skull, something that bar brawlers have known since bars (or beer bottles) were invented.^[3]

7 How To Pee To Avoid Splash Back?

For all the men out there, peeing in unfamiliar washrooms has always been a sort of gamble. One of the reasons is the splash-back mechanics of the pot. You never know how much of it you’re going to get on your shoes and pants, and we’ve all really made peace with the fact.

Is it worth spending resources and conducting a full-fledged scientific study on? No, most men would say—but not these three scientists who believe it’s a problem worth investigating.

In a study conducted at Brigham Young University in the appropriately named Splash Lab, they 3-D-printed a urethra and did all kinds of elaborate experiments to determine exactly what causes the worst kind of splash back. And by “elaborate,” we mean “elaborate”—with a team of scientists and a full-fledged lab setup.^[4]

They determined that the size of the pee droplets or the speed with which you pee doesn’t matter at all. Rather, it’s about the angle, even if most of us would have figured that out on one of our drunk nights without any lab equipment whatsoever.

6 What’s The Mathematical Formula For Perfect Cheese On Toast?

Putting cheese on toast seems like a perfectly straightforward thing to do. You just take the cheese and the toast and . . . put the cheese on top of the toast.

Sure, some people may want it to be perfect and may go to some lengths to incorporate advanced cheese-putting techniques into their breakfast routine. But by and large, people don’t seem to, say, need a mathematical formula to do it.

The Royal Society of Chemistry along with the British Cheese Board vehemently disagrees, though. They actually have a mathematical formula—complete with complex variables and units of measurement that have no business being on a formula for cheese on toast—to perfectly do it.^[5]

They tweaked the different variables—like the temperature and texture of the cheese—under strict lab conditions to come up with it, too, though we still maintain that there was absolutely no need for them to do so in the first place.

5 How To Walk Without Spilling Your Coffee?

Anyone who has ever had to get up from his desk and walk somewhere with a cup of coffee in one hand knows the problems that come with that decision. Unless you’re gifted at the art of balancing—or at least have spent considerable time practicing exactly that—there’s a good chance that you’ll spill some of it.

And for most of us, that’s a trade-off we’re willing to make as the more time that the coffee is in your immediate reach, the more coffee you can drink because coffee is awesome. Is the problem big enough for a scientific study, though? We don’t think so.

However, that’s not true for the scientists who have spent quite a bit of time trying to understand the physics behind coffee spills while walking. Using complex phrases like “fluid-structure interaction of the coffee cup,” “resonance region,” and “maximum spillage,” the study took an in-depth look into how we can optimize our walking-with-coffee experiences.

They concluded—totally without irony and presumably with straight faces—that one of the best ways to walk with coffee is to walk backward, even if you’d look stupid doing it and the spilling thing really is not that big of a problem anyway. They also suggest a clawlike hold of the cup to further improve the results.^[6]

4 Take A Photo Without Anyone Blinking?

If you’re the designated photographer for any family gathering (it’s not because you’re ugly, we swear; you’re just very good at it), you’ll be familiar with the problem of that one person who always ends up blinking in the final image, no matter what you do.

It’s not always the same person, either. It can be anyone, and they probably didn’t even do it consciously (unless some evil person is actually timing their blinks with the click for the kicks).

What’s really a nonissue for most casual photographers, however, is something worth studying for CSIRO physicist Dr. Piers Barnes. He employed probability and calculus to come up with an equation to determine exactly how many photographs you’d need to take (with a 99 percent confidence level) to ensure that you get one without anybody blinking.

He determined that the greater the number of people in the photo, the higher the chances of unintentional blinks. If the number of people is in the mid-range, say somewhere around 20, you’d have to take about six photographs if the light is good and about 10 if it’s not.^[7]

3 How Does Sitting For A Long Time Affect A Cow’s Ability To Stand Up?

We all know that cows are difficult to understand. You’re never sure what they want from just the expressions on their faces as they’re spectacularly devoid of any show of emotion. However, we can’t complain because they provide us with food and milk. They also laze about for a long time depending on how leisurely they’re feeling that day because, let’s face it, they’re cows and that’s what they do.

For the scientists who conducted this study, which was published in Applied Animal Behavior Science, there was evidently some scientific data to be collected among all the sitting down and standing up that the cows were doing, which the researchers set out to find. Data like “are cows that have been sitting down for a longer time more likely to stand up?”^[8]

After recording and studying tens of thousands of instances of cows lying down with specially installed sensors, the scientists concluded that, yes, the longer a cow sits, the more likely it is to stand back up.

2 How Uncomfortable Is Wet Underwear Really?

If you’ve ever found yourself in the rain or jumped into the water without a change of clothes at hand, you’d know the trouble you’re in—wet undergarments. Despite our presumably best efforts to advance underwear tech, not much progress has been made on how to minimize that discomfort. It’s bad, but then it’s also something we learn to live with.

Except for these scientists, who were just not buying it. Does it really make you uncomfortable?

To get to the bottom of it, they set up a study of their own—complete with test subjects and verifiable scientific research. They took eight men, put them in wet underwear, and monitored their skin and rectal temperatures as well as weight loss during a 60-minute period. This included details like the rate of shivering and visible discomfort.

In a result that would not be called surprising in any way, they concluded that, yes, wet underwear does make you colder and more uncomfortable and the thickness of the material played a big role in the results.^[9]

1 What’s Up With Navel Fluff?

The belly button serves no discernible purpose other than being part of the overall look of the body that we’d all look pretty creepy without. The only times we give it any attention are the few days we decide it needs to be cleaned out. Other than that, it’s sort of just there in the background.

If we asked you the exact nature of the fluff that accumulates there, most of us would reply with “probably dirt, who cares?” Though that’s not enough for this scientist from Vienna University of Technology, who spent over four years studying the precise contents of navel lint.

From 2005 to 2009, Georg Steinhauser collected 503 pieces of his own navel fluff and carefully studied it for clues as to what it could be. You can say that it turned into an obsession at some point as he also started asking other people about their navel fluff.

Hopefully, he added to his readings—or maybe he just weirded some people out for no reason. He concluded that the lint was actually directed by the type of hair found in the belly button and mostly came from the shirt or T-shirt he was wearing that day.^[10]

Himanshu can be found shouting obscenities at strangers on Twitter @RudeRidingRomeo or making amateur drawings on Instagram @anartism_. He has written for Screen Rant, Forbes, Cracked, Modern Rogue, and Arre. Pay him money for writing stuff for you here: [email protected]

Math is, understandably, a complicated subject to get a hang of. Most of us are simply not wired to do anything with a large amount of numbers, even if we’re intuitively mathematical beings. We’re adding, subtracting, multiplying and doing even more complicated equations in our heads all the time. It’s a problem, though, when that turns into complicated symbols and alien words like ‘derivatives’ as soon as it’s translated on paper.

See Also: 10 Simple But Costly Math Errors In History

While some mathematicians would simplify those complex equations for the layman, there are also those who do the complete opposite – apply a complicated equation to something simple for no discernible reason. A considerable amount of funding from legitimate – even government – sources has gone into finding out the math behind the simplest things in our everyday lives, even if we never – for once – asked for it.

From the mythical “Beer Goggles” effect to dripping teapots, here are 10 simple things scientists made unnecessarily complicated with math.

8The “Beer Goggles” Effect

We’ve always suspected that having more alcohol makes other people more attractive to you. In fact, many of us depend on it. There have never been any studies that confirm this, though most of us have always just assumed it to be the case from anecdotal experience.

Some researchers from St. Andrews University and Glasgow University in Scotland, though, weren’t satisfied with just that. They sought out to seek the ultimate formula for how alcohol affects attractiveness, and set up a study.

As they found, the formula consists of symbols we honestly do not have even the educational background to understand. As far as we can tell, it depends on a variety of factors, like how brightly lit the area is, the amount of smoke in the air, number of glasses you’ve had etc. It then calculates a “Beer Goggle” factor from 1 to 100, where at 1 you perceive everyone to be as attractive as you would sober, and 100 where you find everyone in the room to be at peak mating condition.

7 The Physics Of Biscuit Dunking

Biscuits maybe the British equivalent of cookies, but they occupy a more prominent role in British culture than their American counterparts. Tea and biscuits are one of Britain’s favorite snacks, especially during the more boring parts of a typical British day. That’s why all Brits are aware of the classic dunking method of having biscuits with tea. Most of them are good at dunking their biscuits, but only a few are serious about it.

Take this one British scientist, who wanted to perfect the science of biscuit dunking. He carried out an elaborate and in-depth study on all the factors that affect the dunk-ability of a biscuit, and it took him years to finish, too.

Many of his findings were surprising – even if completely unnecessary and unasked-for – like the fact that a gingernut biscuit should be dunked for 3 seconds, while a digestive biscuit could be dunk for up to 8 seconds.

6 How To Hold A Hamburger

Despite being around hamburgers for so long, most of us are bad at eating them without making a mess. There’s really nothing we can do to change that without fundamentally altering what makes them so good. Moreover, most people don’t care either way.

Some researchers appearing on a Japanese TV show, though, claimed to have found the perfect way to hold a hamburger without spilling anything. They came to that conclusion after months of complex calculations and research, too, suggesting that they were serious about it.

According to them, a hamburger is best held with the thumb and pinky fingers on one side, and all the other fingers on the other, holding everything down. It may even work if you keep the angles right, though that’s if you want to bring math into your food.

5 How To Avoid Teapot Dripping

Tea is quickly coming up as a healthier and more organic alternative to caffeine (s/b coffee) around the world. If you’ve ever dabbled in it, you’d know that it also harbors one of the culinary world’s most curious mysteries; how to stop a teapot from dripping along its side when you’re serving it. It happens a lot and is admittedly a problem, though we still manage because tea really is quite healthy.

That can’t be said for the team of fluid dynamics experts that decided to apply some math to it. In a relentless pursuit to end teapot dripping once and for all, they carried out a detailed research into the matter. What they found will shock no one, and was honestly not a very big deal in the first place.

They found that the real problem is a phenomenon called the ‘hydro-capillary effect’, which causes the tea to spill no matter what you do. There are multiple ways to reduce it, like putting butter in the spout, using a teapot made out of a thinner material, or opting for a teapot with a thinner lip.

4 Can Spider-Man Scientifically Exist?

As a casual party conversation, it’s interesting to discuss whether superheroes could, theoretically speaking, exist in real life. It’s easier to answer for superheroes with outright supernatural abilities, as well as the ones with no abilities at all. For everyone in the middle, it gets complicated. While we realize that it’s an important thing to talk about, most of us wouldn’t ponder beyond it.

Some researchers, however, wanted to take the argument further. They took Spider-Man’s ability to stick to walls, and tried to figure out if it could actually be replicated in real life. As they found out, this is one ability humanity will never possess.

Apparently, geckos – according to physics – are the largest animals that could physically scale a wall. It has to do with the mechanics of how we interact with the wall. In order to successfully scale it perfectly like Spider-Man, our shoe size would either have to be a US 114, or 80% of the body’s frontal area would need to stick to the surface. As neither of those seem to be desirable – or even possible – options, they conclusively prove that no amount of scientific progress or evolutionary mutations could ever make us scale walls like geckos.

3 Who Is The Real Antichrist?

The real identity of The Antichrist is a rather theological question. It may even be a philosophical one, though it’s definitely not a mathematical one. We can think of no way you can use math to prove that some real person is, in fact, the Antichrist. For one, the Antichrist isn’t (likely) really a real figure. More importantly, any Antichrist who lets himself be found so easily is not a good Antichrist at all.

Those fundamental problems didn’t dissuade an American author called Robert W. Faid. He spent years – even getting other students and researchers in on the project – trying to find a mathematical link between the Antichrist and Mikhail Gorbachev; yes, the Soviet premier at the time. After painstaking research with higher forms of statistics and probability, he seemed to have found it, too, which he eventually published in a book. According to his research, the odds of Mikhail Gorbachev being the Antichrist were a whopping 710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1.

2How Much Saliva Does A Child Produce?

If you ask someone about an estimate on how much saliva they produce every day, it may come across as a weird question. Besides being too personal, it also doesn’t help with any sort of statistics. Calculating the saliva production may have its uses in some niche areas of medicine, though it’s not anything you’d go out of your way to check for anything in your daily life.

One team of scientists from the University of Hokkaido, Japan, on the other hand, decided to not just calculate that, but further narrow the subject field to just five-year old children. They applied a lot of calculations and general math to it, and came to the conclusion that an average five-year old produces about 500ml (about 17oz) of saliva every day.

1Where Can We Walk On Water?

Walking on water has fascinated humanity ever since the concept was first introduced in a bestselling book around two millennia ago. We won’t lie, we’ve had the thought of being able to do it once in a while, too, though as of now, our laws of physics simply don’t allow it. It’s a bummer, though most of us would probably not lose sleep over it.

That’s not true for this team of researchers from Italy, who came together to conduct the first ever detailed research on the conditions required to walk on water. They compared the structure of the human body with other animals, as well as check if human body is even built to walk on water in the first place.

Unfortunately, as they found out, there is no way we can ever walk on water on Earth. We can, however, walk on water on the moon, if there was water on the moon, and we were willing to go all the way to the Moon just to walk on water.

The reboot is a popular Hollywood trope that has been plaguing franchises for decades. This habit of pulling the plug on anything that stops working and restart it like nothing happened before comes from Hollywood excessive refusal of letting things end. In the eyes of major studios, anything is fair game when it comes to making money, and tainting the legacy of a pre-existing entity is rarely taken into consideration these days, which often ends up alienating the audiences they are so desperately trying to get. So, in that spirit, let’s take a look at 10 upcoming franchise reboots nobody asked for:

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10 True Blood (2022)

HBO’s “True Blood”, adapted from Charlaine Harris’ “The Southern Vampire Mysteries” book series, ran for 7 seasons between 2008 to 2014. Initially revered as a brilliantly crafted show with unique writing and clever world building, “True Blood” slowly turned into an unrecognizable shadow of its former self with a pretty brutal decline in quality over the years, up until its it ended with one of the most disliked series finales in television History. And as the show’s fandom died down, the grim vampire show eventually fell into oblivion, forgotten by most.

So it is with a brutal sense of shock and confusion that Variety reported in December 2020 that HBO had put a “True Blood” reboot in development, not even 6 years after the end of its predecessor. Even the biggest fans of the show seemed to be asking why this was happening, especially when they found out that this reboot would be coming from Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the show runner of the “it’s so bad it’s good” CW disaster “Riverdale”. Cast members of the original series also seemed confused by the reboot, but wished it well when asked about it in interviews.^[1]

9 The Chronicles Of Narnia (2023)

The iconic series of novels by C.S. Lewis has already been subject of Hollywood adaptations back in 2005. “The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe”, the second novel in the series, was brought to the big screen by Andrew Adamson, heavily influenced by the pop culture impact of the Harry Potter franchise. The film was critically acclaimed and beloved by fans, but two highly disappointing sequels and diminishing returns at the box office eventually led the franchise to lose audiences’ interest, and a planned fourth film was eventually cancelled.

In 2018, Netflix acquired the rights to the franchise and announced a reboot coming in the form of movies and TV shows simultaneously that will first adapt books that weren’t turned into movies, in order to build a cinematic universe in C.S. Lewis’ world. However, the movie side of this new incarnation seems to have been put on the shelf for now, and while we have very little information about the development of the project, it looks like the TV series is going to be the only one moving forward for the set release date of 2023.^[2]

8 Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Let’s face it: the only good “Ghostbusters” movie was the first one, and it came out 37 years ago. Since it’s disappointing 1989 sequel, Hollywood has desperately been trying to find a way to recapture that magic for reasons that most people do not understand (or money). It took 27 years for the first attempt to arrive on screens, after a proposed “Ghostbusters 3” spent two decades in development hell and died. 2016’s rebooted “Ghostbusters”, starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon, should have been a clear warning that it is best to leave the franchise in the past… but Hollywood is stubborn (or stupid . . . or both).

“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” was announced in 2018, with a 2020 release date (which was pushed to 2021 due to the coronavirus. The movie aims to be a sequel/reboot of the original film, and, contrary to its previous entry, this iteration will not be banking on the nostalgia of older fans, but will instead try to reinvent the formula to appeal to a younger audience, with the new characters being teenagers this time around. Despite a decent first trailer, the excitement for “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” has been mild, and many people are curious to see how it will actually perform at the box office.^[3]

7 Dexter (2021)

Showtime’s “Dexter” is, in the eyes of many, a modern classic of television. The show about a serial killer who exclusively murders serial killers took the world by storm in an unexpected way when it premiered back in 2006. That said, “Dexter” is also infamous for its 2013 series finale, which probably stands as one of the most universally hated finales ever made. The show had been on a bit of a downward spiral during the last couple of seasons, but no one expected the show’s ending to be such an infuriating disappointment, and everyone was very happy to leave the show behind.

As a result, when Deadline reported in October 2020 that Showtime was bringing the show back for a one season reboot in 2021, everyone was really confused. A number of fans got irritated by the idea, fearing that the show would make a cheap attempt to retcon the ending and take all the logic out of the story, but show runner Clyde Phillips has assured fans during an interview with Vulture that this reboot season will not try to undo the original finale, but will instead build on it in an attempt to make it right. So… fingers crossed?^[4]

6 Wonka (2023)

Yeah… the story of a young Willy Wonka and how he came to become the weird and eccentric man we meet with Charlie and his family in the “Chocolate Factory” movies is definitely something no one asked for. The idea of doing this movie has been played with in Hollywood for well over a decade, but no filmmaker seemed to be able to find a “right way” to make it work… or to make it interesting in the first place. However, The Hollywood Reporter revealed in January 2021 that a movie simply titled “Wonka” had officially been put in development by Warner Bros with the producers of Harry Potter and Paddington, with a March 2023 release date set, which had the entire Internet reacting with a resounding “Huh?”^[5]

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5 Inspector Gadget (2024)

Inspector Gadget seems to have been generally forgotten by modern pop culture. Having skyrocketed to popularity in 1983 with the original DIC Entertainment animated series, the franchise was eventually spun off into three movies between 1999 and 2003, and aside from a poorly received animated reboot in 2015, the franchise has largely disappeared. But, in 2019, Vulture broke a story that revealed that Disney had just put in motion a brand new live-action “Inspector Gadget” movie in development, with plans to have it released sometime between 2021 and 2022.

But, despite a confident announcement, the preproduction process seems to have been quite a hassle behind the scenes though, and the project seems to have fallen into a bit of a development hell stage, but rumours in late 2020 have started to circulate about the movie possibly landing on Disney+ towards the end of 2023 or 2024.^[6]

4 Gossip Girl (2021)

The CW’s “Gossip Girl” is a modern classic that has marked an entire generation of teenagers during its highly popular 6-season run. Between 2007 and 2012, the show followed the story of a group of elite youth of New York City, who tried to navigate their lives of money, sex and debauchery, all while being under the unforgiving eye of Gossip Girl, a mysterious entity who uncovers their secrets and make them public, even if it means destroying their lives.

After its divisive finale in 2012, people moved on from “Gossip Girl” and accepted it as being a product of its time. However, in 2018, 6 years after the show’s end, HBO announced a reboot of the show that would also serve as a sequel to the original series with new characters. The online response was wild, both from fans and the cast of the original series, who all seem to be somewhat disapproving of their show being rebooted so soon after the ending. This new “Gossip Girl” series was first set to be released in 2020, but it was pushed to 2021, as HBO moved it to their streaming service HBO Max.^[7]

3 Knight Rider (2023)

The adventures of David Hasselhoff’s Michael Knight and KITT, his car equipped with an artificial intelligence, are an absolute staple of 80’s pop culture. Running from 1982 to 1986, “Knight Rider” was a highly popular procedural with an infinitely unique concept, and most people assume that it would really difficult to replicate the show’s vibe. A 90’s reboot and a mid-2000s sequel series both failed to impress and were cancelled very early on, and fans just accepted that it was maybe best to let the show be a wonder of the past.

But in 2020, in a report that seemingly came out of nowhere, Deadline dropped a bomb on everyone by announcing that a new movie reboot of Knight Rider was in the works at Spyglass, with “Saw”, “The Conjuring” and “Aquaman” director James Wan attached to produce. Saying that this was met with extreme skepticism would be an understatement. Even David Hasselhoff admitted to feeling unsure about the movie, but as of right now, very little is known about this reboot, so only time will tell how they plan on adapting the premise of “Knight Rider” to the modern world.^[8]

2 Pirates Of The Caribbean (2023)

It has been a while since a “Pirates Of The Caribbean” movie has wowed audiences. The first film is considered by many to be an absolute masterpiece, and the following two sequels, while not as good, are highly popular in their own right. But, afterwards, the franchise turned into a shadow of its former self, and after the colossal flop of the fifth instalment “Dead Men Tell No Tales” in 2017, Disney decided to throw the ongoing series in the garbage, along with Johnny Depp and his character in order to reboot the whole thing. This move was solidified in 2018 when Vanity Fair confirmed that a reboot was in the works, with “Deadpool” writers working on the script.

Not only have people lost interest for the Pirates franchise long ago, but if there is one thing people never asked for, it is a reboot of the franchise that will take away its most iconic element: Jack Sparrow. Nobody knows what to expect with this new incarnation of “Pirates Of The Caribbean”, but fans seem to be very annoyed by Disney’s decisions with the franchise over the last 10 years, and this next movie will either the one to save it all, or ruin it for good.^[9]

1 Home Alone (2022)

“Home Alone” is a staple of American cinema. It is considered to be one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, and it has such a powerful place in pop culture that it is still as relevant today as when it was released 30 years ago. So when it was announced that a reboot of the movie was heading to Disney+ in 2022, fans were obviously pretty upset. The general consensus was that audiences have never seen “Home Alone” as a property that needed to be remade, because the original movie is so timeless.

But, Disney decided to move forward regardless, and it has now been confirmed that “Home Alone” is currently in a casting process and aims to start shooting later this year. Chris Columbus, director of the original movie, has publicly rejected the idea of a reboot, but Macauley Culkin, who played protagonist Kevin McAllister in the original, is reportedly set to appear in this new reboot in an unknown role. Many are curious to see what the finished movie will look like, and how it will be received by both older and younger audiences.^[10]

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At the end of the 1970s, merchandise from the Star Wars trilogy sent the toy market into a spin. Using characters from the movies, action figures took on a whole new money-making life of their own. Once large doll-like objects, primarily with military themes, these scaled-down characters were a fresh new take. This led to an action-figure frenzy.

From galactic warriors to hulking fantasy barbarians, it seemed like every month heralded the arrival of a new line. With movie and animation tie-ins, plastic maquettes flooded the shelves for the next decade. But, while some defined our childhood, not all were wanted and sat lingering in shops for some time.

Related: 10 Terrifying Toys From The Past

10 Teenage Mutant Turtles—Toon Burne

The array of Turtles figures released to capitalize on their initial success was huge. However, it followed a simple, rough formula. This included taking an anthropomorphic character, much like the Turtles themselves, and giving it some kind of gimmick. At one point, the consumer demand for new figures was so high new characters came that had not even been featured in the animated series. These included crazy concepts like a Shakespeare-loving lion and a firefighting dalmatian dog.

But none of these was as uninspired as Toon Burne. Part of a toon line that aimed itself at a younger audience, Burne was the boss of the Channel 6 news station that often-covered stories about the Turtles. A bedraggled, overweight, middle-aged man, it is quite unknown why someone assumed this would attract younger buyers. Just to make sure, they packaged him with an exciting array of items. Sandwich and typewriter, anyone?^[1]

9 WWF Space Domination—Marc Mero

There are several lines and individual figures that WWE, or its former company name WWF, could have on this list. From Bret the Hitman Hart dressed as a 1930s gangster to the hideous Maximum Sweat line (yes, action figures that sweat), some true abominations have existed in the name of sports entertainment. However, none has been as boring as Marc Mero in space.

As part of the Space Domination Stomp 3 line, some wrestlers may have sported space versions. The Legion of Doom, with their post-apocalypse armor, fit the model anyway. Even The Undertaker of the future is a cool idea. Yet quite why mid-carder Marc Mero got a figure is unfathomable.

Sporting an outfit comprised of old washing machine parts, it was one of the few action figures of the wrestler to ever exist. Oddly, his wife Sable also has a figure in the same line, with her in a bikini accompanied by very little else. Unsurprisingly, most children didn’t feel the need to send their favorite superstars into space, not least Marc Mero, and the line soon vanished.^[2]

8 G.I. Joe—The Fridge

One of the most interesting things about G.I. Joe figures was the many occupations they had. Included on the backing card, each would let you know who the character was, if they were good or bad, and their role or specialism. In the early days, this was exciting as you got jobs you would expect in the military. Yet as the line went on, these jobs became wackier and more out there. At some point, it was decided G.I. Joe needed a real-life celebrity to be their physical training instructor.

William “The Fridge” Perry played defensive tackle for the Chicago Bears. A huge man, he was the heaviest person to ever score a touchdown in a Superbowl and has the largest Superbowl ring size in history. He is also the second real-life person, after Sgt Slaughter, to get their own G.I Joe figure.

The figure was available as a Hasbro mail-away promotion in 1986, though the figures arrived in 1987. Complete with an American football on a chain, it remains to be seen how well he would fare on the battlefield against Cobra with this unique weapon.^[3]

7 Beach Spiderman

After saving the universe from Thanos and clearing the city of Kingpin’s criminal empire, even superheroes need to relax. That includes everyone’s favorite web-slinger, and while fans of Spidey may think relaxing on a rooftop with a pizza is his favorite way to chill, it is actually going to the beach. But only if you believe everything this figure tells you.

We are not sure why Spiderman wouldn’t just change to Peter Parker. Instead, he decides to wear a vest, keep his mask on and slip on some Spiderman board shorts. The figure also comes with lifeguard gear, such as a float and a handy beachball if the time comes when he wants to play volleyball with other heroes.

Part of the Adventure Hero line, it may not even be the weirdest figure. A colonial-era safari suit worn over his lycra is included with one toy, and an inline skater Spiderman is another. ^[4]

6 Masters of the Universe—Astro Lion

The Transformers are a hugely successful toy line that arrived in the eighties and was a piece of marketing genius. These toys had been licensed from existing plans for various Japanese transforming robots. Once a backstory and animation were in place, mass sales soon followed. A craze for transforming figures arrived, and you would soon find them all over.

Masters of the Universe was another popular toy line of the decade. Yet when its popularity wavered, it decided to also try this tactic. One of its new factions was The Meteorbs. Based on a series of Japanese transforming eggs known as Tamagoras, they looked extremely out of place with the bulky mass of He-Man and his companions.

Astro Lion arrived later in the line’s popularity and was an attempt to try something that would keep consumers interested. However, a scrawny lion that changed into an egg was not something fans were ready for, particularly in a line that already had the iconic and fearsome Battle Cat.

This oddity was not the only transforming figure the line would try either. Stonedar and Rokkon were in the franchise and were heroes who transformed into exciting rocks. If you think this is a boring concept, then a whole other line of toys by Tonka would try this with their “Rocklords.” ^[5]

5 Star Wars—Power Droid

Star Wars is well known to have dredged every extra and background character in the race for new action figure material. Despite not being the most exciting, most could at least interact with other figures and serve a purpose. Few of them had an existence as pointless as the power droid.

A walking battery, the toy looked nothing like it did in the movie. It had very little articulation and was essentially a box on legs. Most people knew them as gonk droids because of the familiar noise they made in the movie. This meant that when the figure was on sale, no one knew what it was at all. The only positive thing that can be said about it is that it was one of the few figures that could stand on its own feet.^[6]

4 Transformers—Beast Machines Silverbolt

The Transformers have great skill when it comes to making quite seemingly boring items cool. For example, one of its most iconic characters turns into a tape recorder. Yet occasionally, some mishaps have occurred in its long pedigree of excellent figures. One of them was the nerfing of Silverbolt.

Silverbolt was one of the Fuzors, a blend of two beast forms. In plain language, he was in the Beast Wars cartoon and was half wolf, half eagle, which made for a mean-looking toy. Coupled with his penchant for paladin-like verse, he was one of the standouts in the whole line. That was until the follow-up line Beast Machines when he would become what can only be described as a cartoon parrot.

In robot mode, Silverbolt looked bad. He had a small shapeless head, large paws, and a sword made from his translucent wings. Yet it was easy to see that this is why he was packaged in robot form, as his animal transformation was even worse. A vomit-colored cockatoo, his arms look like the last spicy wings in the bottom of the bucket.^[7]

3 Dune Sandworm

You can come to your own sordid conclusions about what the Dune Sandworm looks like. Before its modern update, Dune had an outing directed by David Lynch. With a huge budget, it was slated to be the next Star Wars but ended up as a commercial flop.

The original toy line was created by LJN, a company now retrospectively scoffed at for how bad some of their figures were. They had atrocious console games and were responsible for a line of wrestling figures with no articulation.

Yet this long, bendable sandworm has to take the crown. It is astounding how no one at the company vetoed it before its release. In the scheme of phallus-shaped toys, it comes in second only to the ET finger light…^[8]

2 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves—Friar Tuck

One scheme crafty toy companies use to save money is to reuse the molds of previously released action figures. For example, He Man’s Battle Cat was originally a cast used with the Big Jim series of toys. Yet when it came to figures for the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves movie, it seemed like manufacturers Kenner really couldn’t be bothered creating anything new at all.

Robin himself was recast from a Green Arrow figure used in the DC Superpowers line. Another entry was a treetop playset that was repurposed from an Ewok hideout. However, it was one of Star Wars’ most iconic figures, the Gamorrean Guard, who took the biggest insult.

All the company did was replace the head with that of a fat drunk and sell it as Friar Tuck. Not only was he one of the most uninteresting characters in the movie, but he also didn’t even get a new figure.^[9]

1 Indiana Jones—German Mechanic

Making figures for the Indiana Jones films seemed like an obvious choice. It was another George Lucas trilogy that was going to be a smash hit. Kenner, the makers of Star Wars, also had the license. What could go wrong?

The problem was that once children had Indy himself, the other characters were not that interesting after that. Where Star Wars had weird and wonderful aliens that fired the imagination, Indiana Jones just had people. Enter the German Mechanic.

This character appears in Raiders of the Lost Ark and engages in a fistfight with the main character. However, his clumsiness sees him get cut up by the propellor of a plane fairly quickly. And that is his narrative arc.

His figure is even more uninspiring. The ripped physique of the actor has turned into a flabby, balding middle-aged man who has taken his shirt off. How could it fail to prize pocket money from children?^[10]