Vintage appliances, which ones stunk?

[leadlike]

I'm not sure it they count as home appliances, but photographic equipment of the era was really hit or miss, especially with movie projectors. Looking over old catalogs, it looks like you had to hit a pretty high price point before you could get one that would not shred film continuously. The really notorious ones were the cheapo specials that appeared in the backs of comic books or magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland (Captain Company, anyone?) Those projectors might just be powered by a few D cell batteries with no film loop to speak of.

So much film died in these things, and worse still, people are still trying to get these junkers running today, and destroying irreplaceable films in the process.