(FORTUNE Magazine) – On the opposite side of the sun from Earth is a planet just like ours--except for some differences. There, the inhabitants eat McLean Deluxes, washed down with Crystal Pepsi. They glide across lakes in their Amphicars, wearing Scott Paper Capers disposable dresses or sucking on Premier smokeless cigarettes. They pass pleasant evenings watching Cutthroat Island on the Betamax, while Junior plays with his Baby Jesus doll. The men's haircuts are Flowbee sharp, the women's legs Epilady smooth. This is the planet of Misfit Consumer Products.

Back on Earth, those products mostly annoyed or bemused the populace. While the preceding story might make you think the 20th century has seen one miraculous device after another, the fact is that progress isn't always pretty. For every Model T, there is an Edsel; for every Apple Macintosh, an Apple Newton. Nobody sets out to make a lousy product, and some bad products at first seem like good ones. The AT&T Picturephone, for instance, looks like a natural brand extension. But as the writer David Foster Wallace noted, a videophone destroys the best aspect of a phone conversation: the belief that while you watch TV, do chores, and attend to personal grooming, the person on the other end hangs on your every word. That flaw is probably why the picture phone has never caught on, despite being around since 1964.

Most bad products seemed like bad ideas from the start; many could be spotted as losers from their names alone. Nothing good can come from Nullo internal deodorant, despite its manufacturers' promises that if you take a dose of it, you will remain odor-free for a week. Ditto Hop 'n Gator, a lemon-lime flavored beer. Perhaps the century's worst product name (and concept) belongs to Snif-T-Panties, women's underwear that smelled like bananas, popcorn, whiskey, or pizza.

Some products began as fine concepts but turned out badly because of poor execution. An affordable car with high gas mileage is a good idea; a Ford Pinto is not. Dirigibles can be quite enjoyable; the Hindenberg was not. Because Mattel had been playing around with Barbie and her pals for decades, a hip "downtown" Ken probably seemed like a sure-fire hit. But the resulting Earring Magic Ken doll--clad in black pants, a lavender-mesh top, a purple-vinyl vest, and frosted two-tone hair--looked, well, as if Barbie's lifemate had found a new lifestyle. Not, of course, that there was anything wrong with that.

In other products, the trouble lay neither in concept nor in execution, but in sheer uselessness: the pet rock, say, or the morning drive-time radio program. The king of pointlessness has to be the Nothing Box, with its eight blinking lights, marketed by Hammacher Schlemmer in 1963. As the ad copy promised, "It will keep winking its eight eyes in no recognizable pattern and for no apparent reason for nearly a year. Then it's as dead as a mackerel, and you can't get it fixed." Whee.

The Nothing Box did have its moment: Dwight Eisenhower bought one, and the Beatles bought hundreds to give as gifts. Which raises an unsettling point: As hideous as some of this century's products have been, even more amazing is the number of bad ones that have been successful. Astroturf is only now ending its dominance of the nation's sports stadiums. Aerosol cheese continues to be sold in stores. But when it comes to the last word in tasteless products that have made good, there's only one: Spam. It established a beachhead as World War II rations and went on to sell 5.5 billion cans.