Busted Product Photo Contest

Contest time, biznitches. Send in your busted consumer product photos. The best one wins a free Gawker T-Shirt of the champion’s choosing.

Photos should be hi-rez jpeg’s at least 522 pixels wide. You have until March 22nd, 12 noon to submit. Please include a note on the product and model type.

Judging Criteria (subject to change at whim):

  • The more busted and crazy looking, the better.
  • Any product will do but it’s better to have a busted cell phone, then say, a busted cement mixer. Think “consumer product.”
  • We’re secret art fags, so interesting composition, color, lighting and clarity will be taken into consideration.
  • Bonus points for a good story on why it’s busted.

Yes, you can submit photos you found or of other people’s stuff, but the personal is almost always better. Because it’s real. And real feels good.

Send entries to tips@consumerist.com, subject line “busted.” [p]

UPDATE: We’ve already got a few entries. They’re posted after the jump…

photocopyrightbenritter-1.jpg

Submitted by: Benjamin

Sharp-TV.jpg

“Found on the Street, the day after the Superbowl.”

Submitted by: Christopher

monitor-smasher2.jpg

“The monitor is a Radius. I have no idea what the product number is. It seems to be out of production. And yeah, that’s me wielding the mallet on it.”

Submitted by: Phil

wetarmchair.jpg

“Singin’ in the Rain”

Submitted by: Fredrick

sad_computer.jpg

“I snapped this picture last year while I was strolling through Lincoln Park in San Francisco.

Apparently someone decided to turn their HP desktop computer into a garbage can. I particularly liked the Korean newspaper wadded up and stuffed in next to the banana peels.

Nothing says “Post Dot-Com San Francisco” quite like e-Waste.”

Submitted by: Seth

noparking.jpg

Submitted by: Everett

phone1.jpg

Before

phone5.jpg

After

“This is my old Motorola T720 phone. I had very strong feelings about this phone, which is why I took it to a cow pasture and shot it as soon as I got a new one. The pictures were taken using my fresh-out-of-the-box LG phone, which has worked very well after witnessing the fate of its predecessor.”

Submitted by: Loren

gp2.jpg

I roadrace motorcycles.(on a closed circuit track, with a club, NOT on the street). Specifically, Super Motard style, which involves converting a lightweight, high horsepower dirt bike, into a roadracing monster.

When you change the front wheel from 21″ diameter to 17″ diameter, you can no longer use the traditional geared spedometer drive. All the ratios are incorrect.

Instead of calculating new ratio and using a different gear to drive the speedometer, I simply bought a GPS! It’ll tell you how fast you are going, right?

As an added bonus, it has maps. I get lost ALL the time. And I am a guy. Now? with GPS? I never have to stop and ask embarrasing questions. And the misses doesn’t have the chance to point and laugh.

The GPS knows ALL!

Until, of course, you jet into a corner a little too hot, the tires lose traction, and you find yourself flying and tumbling. As I did. And I kept feeling something hitting me in the back of the head.

I am flying and tumbling down the track at 100+mph, and all I wonder is “what the heck is hitting me in the head?” so I turn my head a little, and find out it’s the bike cartwheeling and chasing me down the track, flinging parts off as we go.

After we stopped, and I got all reacclimated, and was done seeing everything as “earth-Sky-earth-Sky” I picked up, and started collecting the bits.

gps1.jpg

Garmin Industries claims the 60CS is a padded, water-proof, shock-proof unit.

It isn’t.

$175 and 4 weeks later, they sent me a refurb unit. That means for 4 weeks, I could not find my way anywhere, as I have become dependant on “the box” a few weeks ago I was riding the SAME bike, but back in dirtbike configuration. Playing in Jawbone Canyon, Mojave Desert. Riding along minding my own business, I realized the box was no longer on the handlebar. Turned around and rode back 15 minutes till I found it on the trail.

This time the back of the case is broken, the housing around the mounting ‘button’ just disentigrated.

But it still works, and I dont have $175 extra to get another refurb. So I duct taped it, and am using zip ties to hold it on.

If you have a high tech product you’d like abused, feel free to let me help. I can bust anything!”

Submitted by: Charles

rusted-sounds-consumerist.jpg

“This is a turntable… unfortunately it didn’t belong to me, and there was no readable brand on it. I found it off a trail in the woods a couple of years ago, clearly its owner must have figured nature needed a new soundtrack… either that or he got a CD player for Christmas.”

Submitted by: Pablo

ps2.jpg

“Was bored and drunk one night playing the PS2 and the “Disc Read Error” popped up at the wrong time. Lead to the violent death of my ps2 with a hammer, the ground, and some fireworks to finish it off.”

Submitted by: Albert

olrusty.jpg

“My great-grandpa owned a car dealership in Nampa Idaho. He started selling Stanley Steamers, Model T’s and then Studebaker’s. This is a 1931 Studebaker that is on my grandparent’s property and according to my Grandma has the distinction of being “the first one sold in the City of Nampa, Idaho.” When pressed about how the car came to sat there for 70 years, my 80 year old grandpa reported, ‘Well, it just stopped working and there it sat. You know how those things go. Nothing fancy, end of story.'”

Submitted by: trixare4Kids

3deadtvs.jpg

“Three dead TV’s, underneath an equally dead bridge in the middle of BFE, Illinois. I like the beer can in the middle.”

Submitted by: Justin

burned-beamer.jpg

“Found this parked across from my friend’s apartment in LA when I was visiting. It turns out, the day before he and his girlfriend were stuck in a huge traffic jam on the 5 (imagine that!), and eventually they came upon the source: a burning car. Low and behold, it happened to be his neighbor’s car.

Not sure if they were planning to fix this up or just use it for parts!? “

Submitted by: Jason

scooter.jpg

“It was the 2nd of januari and I felt like I had been drinking for 3 days. Wait I had been drinking for 3 days! So I decided that it was time to get some fresh air. That and we were all out of cereal. So off I went, out the front door into the cold light that’s called the januari sun. Just around the corner I stumbled upon this burnt out scooter. I snapped a pic with my RAZR and went on my way.

When I got home I showed my mates the pic and they all pointed and laughed. They told me that on new year’s eve we had been roasting marshmellows in that fire ….
.

Later I discovered that the owner had put the thing to fire himself. Few!

I live in Amsterdam, next to the burnt scooter is a so called ‘Amsterdammertje’. It survived!”

Submitted by: iDarkDesign

rustcar.jpg

“On the road, if you could call it that to Snow flake mine, Saline Vlley, CA.”

Submitted by: Bob

cd_3.jpg

“I tried to sell this on EBay……

This is a slightly used Laptop it was dropped off for repairs and never picked up or paid for after being fully serviced (2 hours labor). Some damage to the system had occurred while we were deer hunting and now I no longer have a need for this great laptop.

System specifications:

Compaq Presario 1210
Pentium 233 MHz
real screamer
4 Gig hard drive
.might work
24 x CD Rom drive
.won
t eject properly.
32 MB Ram onboard
.factory installed.
1.5 memory slots available for upgrading.
14
SVGA screen
was working before the damage.
Stereo speakers
.These are also
shot

Fresh install of Windows 98se was installed
but is broken.
Battery not included
..lost it in the woods.
This also includes a working 18.6 Compaq power supply
see the picture no holes!
All parts are pretty much
shot
. Keyboard is missing some keys, the screen may need to be replaced. This system is fully guaranteed to arrive DOA, no returns will be accepted.
This would make a nice system for any church or other organization that would like a holey system or anyone looking for a unique system that is guaranteed not to have any Viruses, Spyware or Spam, it also has had all of those nasty computer demons removed.
NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY SHIPPING DAMAGE, SHIPPING INSURANCE IS NOT RECOMMENDED”

Submitted by: Jon

sink.jpg

“As you can see, it’s recently-deceased PS2. Needed a good scrubbing. Now maybe it’ll work… As you can see, this is a PS2 System. I thought maybe if I gave it a bath, it would work better…”

Submitted by: Mariah

DSC00309.jpg

“This was taken near the homeless community in Osaka Park, Japan.”

Submitted by: Pithawat

tv.jpg

Submitted by: Skepticle

DSC03295.jpg

“This is my LG Phone TP1100 that I used to have on Sprint. My girlfriend gave me a brand new Treo 650 for 2006 New Years, so I and my friends decided to do something crazy with my old phone which was about 3 years old. First thing that we did was, we threw it against the wall and the screen popped off but the bottom part was still working, then my friend suggested to install a 4D generation wallpaper and brought screw and a screw gun. It was a hard installation but we got it done, had minor firewall problem (the casing was too strong). We couldn’t let the bottom piece go without torture because it was still working. My friend went back to his tool box and found a metal saw with which we cut the sides. The battery started to heat really fast so we threw it in to 4 inch snow and it melted it to the ground. We hang what was rest of it on top of the table as a decoration and I celebrated New Year with my brand new Treo.”

Submitted by: Andrew

dead_elph.jpg

“Dead Canon PowerShot S110 Digital Elph (but you can see that on the pic). Uh, you know, the basic digital camera thinks it’s waterproof took an unexpected dive into the warm salty waters of Hawaii. This shot is a poor attempt at cleaning it out with purified fresh water in the hopes that it would dry up and be friendly, it was a poor attempt.”

Submitted by: Kevin

speaker.jpg

“found in an abandonded house in jersey. i wanted to take it home with me.”

Submitted by: Tom

100_0177.jpg

Submitted by: George

tonka.jpg

Submitted by: Charles

Keep ’em coming, y’all, to tips@consumerist.com, subject line “Busted.”

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.