'I could tell you where to stick that bud... but you won't like it'

​You know the ones. Three-inch plastic straws with pea-sized cotton balls at each end - like a wasp’s pugil stick.

These buds come with a warning. Do not put them inside your ear!

For the record, I don’t think I’ve ever used cotton buds to clean my ears, but if I was ever to answer the question: What are cotton buds used for? I think I would answer: To clean your ears.

If you don’t use them for cleaning your ears, what do you use cotton buds for? Cockroach barbells?

I guess if you had a marching band of musically trained hamsters, a cotton bud could be employed as the perfect rodent majorette twirling baton. Maybe it is.

As it turns out, these items are sold with no reference to ears on the packaging, but on Amazon they are known as cotton ear buds.

Oddly, they were invented by a man who watched his wife clean their baby’s ears with a DIY version made out of toothpicks. Which, if you’ve been listening, she absolutely should not have been doing.

It got me thinking: what else do people buy that, despite the name or packaging, isn't used for its intended purpose?

Fashion is full of stuff not used for its original design purpose. I’ll wager 99% of training shoes are employed to do zero training. And what percentage of North Face apparel has been exposed to the most hazardous side of a mountain?

Four-wheel drive all-terrain vehicles like Range Rovers, I would guess, have been used to navigate a pretty limited set of terrains. I mean, unless you’re dropping the kids off at a school via the banks of the Zambezi.

And don’t get me started on Mars bars… I don’t remember that confectionery appearing on the Voyager cargo inventory.

I’d love to hear your examples of everyday misused items. Drop me a line and let me know - but speak up, for some reason I can’t hear very well at the moment…