Self-Improvement Products!

It's 2014, friends, and it's about time you tried to improve yourself. I don't mean deep and rewarding self-improvement projects, the kind that involve learning or creating. I'm talking about superficial self-improvement, or even fake self-improvement products that don't really do anything! Are you in?

The Neck Genie is a spring device which you put under your chin, and you move it, and it "takes years off your appearance." It's that simple! If it weren't for the problem that this doesn't actually work, it would be genius. The best part is the before-and-after picture. The best part is the before-and-after picture. Anyone can achieve the transformative double-chin/single-chin effect by moving their head forward and backward relative to their neck. Look:

There's even a bootleg Neck Genie that uses a knockoff version of the before-and-after trick to illustrate the same principle: When you smile and pull your chin up, you look better. No pills needed.

If you're longing for something more invasive than neck stretches, I recommend the Rejuvenique Facial Toning Mask. It electrocutes your face in 26 different spots, simultaneously. Just strap that bad boy on your head and crank up the juice! One customer claims that it burned and scarred their face, but that just sounds like the kind of thing someone would say if their drive for self-improvement wasn't strong enough to power them through the tough-yet-necessary process of having their jowls brutally zapped and charred. After all, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him stick his face in it every day for six months while you send a strong electric current through the trough.

If that's not hardcore enough for you, may I recommend the Radiancy No!No! Hair Removal Device? It uses a hot wire to burn your skin, in an attempt to keep hair from growing back in that spot. You're supposed to use it anywhere you grow unwanted hair, on your face or otherwise. Unfortunately, while the hot wire does indeed burn your skin, the hair just grows back after you singe it off. More than 200 people have left one-star reviews for this torturebox; read them to see the lengths to which people will go to achieve the important self-improvement goal of removing a little bit of hair from their bodies!

The manufacturer didn't have an acceptable picture for their breast enlargement soap, so I made one for them. Grow them titties! Wash yourself with this soap and watch yourself boob out! It doesn't work, of course, but you might enjoy the review left by a man who claims that after using the soap, his male body is now covered entirely in new breasts.

My favorite self-improvement item of all, though, is one of the classics. Facial Flex has been around for at least twenty years and is still, somehow, being sold. The gizmo itself is probably a hard sell, so they've packaged it with a book and a DVD to beef up the margin. It's still the same old Facial Flex, though, and that GIF up there is still looping, after all these years. Fashion may have changed, and the world may have slid from peace and prosperity into war and recession, but we've still got Facial Flex, our own little piece of facial heaven.

Drew Fairweather is the author of three daily sites: The Worst Things for Sale, Toothpaste for Dinner, and Married to the Sea.

– Drew Fairweather (@drewtoothpaste)