tyro art materials you don't need

The art materials people stay up late at night (later even then I do) to think up things to sell to people who want to be artists. Their job is not to help you to be an artist, but to sell you stuff. They don't actually know anything about art but they have heard the voice of the art student and terminal amateur calling. When you get a catalogue in the mail from an art materials supplier about three quarters of what is in there is aimed at folks who are clueless. Most of the people who receive those catalogues are amateurs or totally inexperienced and the vendors have learned there is a lot of money to be made supplying not artists materials, but the things those folks think they might need.
To fulfill the needs of these occasional and naive visitors to the art sphere they have developed many products that will appeal to the artistic tyro. Frequently these materials are to help the beginning artist experiment or work in a new and easy system that requires less learning to give "professional results immediately. Following is a list of some of those products that you probably don't need.

• iridescent paint, also metallic oil paint, often available in reds and greens, bronze and silver
  
• plastic projectors for transferring images from photos to canvas
  
• plastic devices for holding brushes next to your easel, often in lazy Susan drag, sometimes made of wire
  
• wire storage systems for your studio, often on casters, plastic studio furniture and special plastic tackle boxes for the artist
  
• oil paints with names like coral and delphinium blue rather than after the pigments of which they are made
  
• aprons with specialized pockets just for artists often having the name of the vendor emblazoned thereupon
  
• rubber sticks with beveled ends to be used instead of a brush
  
• books that promise spiritual enlightenment driven means of making your painting better or offer psychology based advice on breaking out of the restraints of creative block.
  
• wheeled trolleys for French easels that fold out into seating for the elderly
• weird color mixing guides that promise a new proprietary way to understand color
• flimsy aluminum easels with plastic parts on their legs that slip while in use.
• safe solvents made from vegetable matter that while harmless, or even potable, will not clean a brush.
• brushes that some artist with a DVD or book has invented in a new shape or configuration that are used to allow the tyro to work in their "method" Also brushes with rubber rings around their handles for EZ grip comfort
  
• books with "free and easy" in the title.
• prestretched canvas with wide stretcher bars that "don't need framing".
• canvas in cabochon, triangles, or octagon shapes .
  
• Paint sets that have collections of dozens of unnecessary colors in tiny tubes nestled in a wooden box with a little bottle of linseed oil and a plastic palette knife and three pieces of cardboard with canvas on them
  
• sets of premixed colors for portrait painting or working in the method espoused by some dork who puts out DVDs on how to paint
• Little posable wooden or plastic mannequins of figures and horses
• ergonomic studio furniture that allows you to work in a kneeling position
• special lamps for painting that clip to your easel
• pads of paper "canvas"
• plastic viewfinders
  
• stuff to spray on canvas to tighten it up when it sags
  
• oil paint compressed into sticks or in little squeeze bottles
• canvas that fits in your printer so you can put a painting on it for painting over
  

I invite you to add to this list of evil and unnecessary junk in the comments. The list is nearly endless.