You just received some brilliant technology from your local Gadgeteer Genius (or on a more "unfortunate" scenario, Bungling Inventor). It's all neatly built and ready to go. And then you activate the damn thing... and it doesn't freakin' work. Ladies and gentleman, we got ourselves a piece of Crapola Tech on our hands, a slab of technology that, let's face it, either didn't have enough kinks worked out of it to ensure it performs its signature function or is just a plain old bad idea from the get go.
Compare Walking Techbane, when it's the user's fault that the gadget breaks. If the malfunction is a really terrible one, it may overlap with Gone Horribly Wrong. See also Infinity -1 Sword, should the technology in question be used for combat purposes. Often a Made in Country X product.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In the very first episode of Medabots, Ikki felt this way about Medabee because he wouldn't start up during a battle. Medabee later on paid him back for the insult...violently.
- In Please Teacher!, the Federation really should check the warranty on Marie. A little rough handling early on causes the supposedly self-repairing robot that controls the alien ship's tech to randomly go on the fritz whenever it's time to cause an embarrassing moment or a Moment Killer between the protagonists.
Comic Books
- The infamous Zinco company from Hellboy. Similar to Acme Products from Looney Tunes, its a running gag how explosively unreliable they are. Of course, since the owner of Zinco is a pawn of Rasputin, this is likely intentional on the part of the company.
- Paperinik (Donald Duck's superhero alter ego of Italian origins) has been a victim of this, either due Gyro's superweapons malfunctioning or Paperinik not reading the instruction manual. Then Paperinik New Adventures has the "device 87 bis" of the Extransformer shield, a forced teleporting beam used exactly three times: the first time was an Epic Fail moment for our protagonist, the second time was an epic fail for the villain who had stolen the shield (followed by Paperinik pointing out it never worked), and the third time was when the villain started stomping the shield in a fit of rage and the device activated, giving him a bad burn after dumping him somewhere in the Hawaii Islands.
Films — Live-Action
- Gremlins. Randall Peltzer's inventions, such as the Bathroom Buddy.
- The Suck Cut from Wayne's World. Wayne himself nailed the bullseye when he said "It certainly does suck".
- From Iron Man 2:
Col. James "Rhodey" Rhodes: I'm gonna bust his bunker with the Ex-Wife.
Tony Stark: The what?
[Rhodey launches the "Ex-Wife" weapon, which bounces off Vanko with no effect...]
Tony: Hammer Tech?
Rhodey: [looks dejected] ... Yeah... - Schindler's List: After moving his workers to Brinnlitz and setting up a munitions plant, Oskar Schindler deliberately sabotages the machinery so that none of the artillery shells he produces can be used. (The real Schindler actually did do this because he wanted to hinder the German war effort as much as possible.)
- Caractacus Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has a similar problem even with his Rube Goldberg Devices, it was so bad that it went all the way around to being good for his "toot sweets", which became edible dog whistles.
- Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back:
- Han is about to be caught by the Empire, but he grinningly engages his uber-modified hyperdrive — which fails. Han's borderline-insane modifications rendered his ship one of the fastest in the entire galaxy when everything works properly... but also a lot more likely to not work properly.
- Narrowly averted a second time, when the Millenium Falcon just had its hyperdrive repaired, and so Lando engages it — only to find that Darth Vader had it deactivated. (Fortunately, good ol' R2 knew this, and fixes it).
- The Star Wars scene is parodied in Fanboys with Hutch's van: When a highway patrol car shows up, Hutch tries to shake it off by engaging the Nitro Boost he has installed on his van. It doesn't work, though. That is, it does work in the end: The nitrous kicks in unexpectedly with a delay, causing Hutch to lose control over his van and the vehicle to leave a hole shaped like Darth Vader's helmet in a billboard.
Literature
- In The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, Dirk buys a cheap electronic calculator that can supposedly also run the I-Ching. He acknowledges that this is a terrible product in both concept and execution, which is exactly why he has to have it. It doesn't even work as a normal calculator; if the numbers go above four it starts reading from its I-Ching memory and claims the answer is "a suffusion of yellow". The calculator's version of the I-Ching is described as having been translated from Chinese via Japanese "and enjoyed many adventures along the way", and the back falls off almost immediately and has to be stuck back on with sticky tape. On the other hand, after reading its commentary on the question of whether he should get a new fridge, he decides it's saying he should, which is exactly what he wanted to do anyway, so in that respect it's a success.
Live-Action TV
- In Doctor Who, the Third Doctor built one of these, and when he (rather bluntly) admitted it didn't work, the Brigadier's reaction was priceless.
- One early episode of iCarly had the kids agree to promote a brand of high-tech shoes that later turn out to be very cheaply made; when Carly steps in a puddle while wearing a pair, she gets shocked, when Freddie uses the Wi-Fi on them, they crash his new laptop, and they're shown to occasionally burst into flames. Since the gang's contract says that they have to praise the shoes on their show, they tote the defects as features to convince their viewers not to buy them.
- Red Dwarf has the Trope Namer, Crapola Inc (based in Taiwan), who were responsible for the creation of, among other things, Talkie Toaster, a toaster with obsessive artificial intelligence.
Tabletop Games
- Just about every piece of equipment a player-character is given in Paranoia for their latest Troubleshooting mission, the exact level of suckitude/lethality dependent entirely on the whim of the GM.
- Deadlands:
- Anything made by Mad Scientists suffers from this. Equipment created by a mad scientist has a "Reliability" number. Whenever you use it, you must roll a 20-sided die; if the result is higher than the "Reliability" number, something goes wrong. The problems can range from "Minor" (your gatling revolver jams) to "Major" (the boiler on your steam-powered car breaks) to "Catastrophe" (your jetpack explodes).
- "El Cheapo" gear is substantially less expensive than regular gear. Unfortunately, this is because El Cheapo doesn't bother with quality control, so everything they sell also has "Reliability" numbers. The bigger the discount, the lower the Reliability.
- Chipwell Armaments, an armor manufacturer in Rifts. They market themselves towards adventurers on a budget, selling equipment that is priced far below their competitors. Unfortunately, they do this by cutting corners wherever they can. The result is equipment, that while functional, provides a fraction of the protection of armor made by just about anyone else. This has earned them the nickname "Cheapo Armor" among mercenaries.
- Quickscell in Battletech, is quite like the Chipwell Armaments example above. Quickscell excels at making shoddy merchandise, sometimes with critical components not even installed at the time of sale. It has gotten so bad, that the Federated Suns mandates in purchase contracts that their quartermaster shall inspect every piece purchased and that any flaws or missing equipment is to be fixed by Quickscell at their own expense or the purchase is cancelled. Their most "popular" ware is the Hetzer wheeled self-propelled gun. It is literally a AC/20 mounted on a wheeled chassis (look Ma, no turret!) with a boxy armored superstructure and no other weapons. It packs a punch, but is about as survivable as it sounds.
Video Games
- In EarthBound, you can donate money to the Orange Kid in Twoson, who claims that he will use it for research. Eventually, he gives the player the Suporma ("Super Orange Machine"), which plays a song that is not heard, called "Ode to Orange Kid", and then breaks.
- About 90% of the items Henry can use in the Henry Stickmin Series will screw up in some hilarious-but-often-fatal way. If it was reviewed by Gadgeteer Gabe, or it's the teleportation device, the failure chance is closer to 99%.
- The Outer Worlds: "It's not the best choice... it's Spacer's Choice!" In-universe, Spacer's Choice gear is generally acknowledged to be cheap junk. From a gameplay perspective, they very quickly become Better Off Sold once you've leveled up a few times and gotten your hands on better quality weapons and armor.
Web Comics
- Riff builds several of these over the course of Sluggy Freelance. It's implied that other mad scientists in this universe do as well, as at one point water cooler security robots are fought which are not waterproof. An alternate-universe Riff also creates several of these for an evil invading horde of demons, even though this version of Riff is very competent. It turns out that when Lord Horribus demanded "Terrible inventions!", alt-Riff was interpreting him literally.
Western Animation
- Glitch Techs: All Hinobi consoles can still function as gaming devices, but the fact literally everything down to just staring at one funny can cause it to spit out very dangerous monsters makes you wonder how any of it got greenlit to market. One episode even reveals that there are games the company refuses to release because they're somehow more glitched than their usual offerings.
- The Venture Brothers:
- The prototype lightsaber #21 purchased from Dr. Venture during the episode "Tag Sale, You're It!" It actually does produce a lightsaber blade...it just can't cut anything.
- Another episode features The Monarch attacking Dr. Jonas Venture at Spider-Skull Island, using his "X-Ray cannon—" which fizzles, causing him to whine "Ah, the X-Ray cannon sucks!"
- Krackus from My Life as a Teenage Robot specializes in building with junk, and it shows.
- A Quailman episode of Disney's Doug features a company named S.T.U.A.R.T. that has made a business model out of this for trolling purposes. Unfortunately for them, they get Quailman himself as a customer, and he decides to deliver his complaints in person.
