After a month of talking about the best, maybe it’s time to spend a moment with the not-so-best…
The WORST Items
Chris: We mentioned several bad choices earlier in the list for various reasons, either because some poor sap voted for them or because there was a better item that needed the contrast. The Spinner comes to mind first. While that dungeon and boss fight are fun, the item itself is useless outside of it. Same with the Dominion Rod. In fact, that’s the biggest problem with Twilight Princess: stringent items that lack any versatility whatsoever.
I also have to throw the Moon Pearl under the bus. I know, keeping your human form in the Dark World seems like a very handy idea, but…consider the item in its own context. You battle your way through a lengthy tower with multiple floors that you keep falling down, and the item you get is…this? Well it’s a damn good thing you get sucked into the Dark World four minutes after this, or this dungeon treasure would be USELESS.
Joseph: Is this even a contest? The spinner. You get some cool puzzles out of it, but its utility drops significantly after that. The game designers could have done something cool and let you use it in the field and have it be like a skateboard (not as fast as Epona, but you don’t have to worry about where to summon it) and instead you go about three feet before Link jumps off and decides he would rather army crawl to the next dungeon. Through thorns. I would rather drink a Poe than see this in another game.
Cary: Spirit Flute: I was not much of a fan of the Nintendo DS’s microphone; it just never seemed work that well. So maybe my experience with The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, a game that required frequent mic use, was doomed from the start. The game made players to blow into the mic to utilize a couple items: the Whirlwind and the Spirit Flute. Now, I was actually okay with using the Whirlwind, because all you had to do was steadily blow into the mic to make the thing work. And most of the time, it worked just fine. (It’s one of my personal favorite items from the series.) With the Spirit Flute, however, the mechanics of playing it were just awful. You had to use the touchscreen to slide the flute to the correct note and then blow. Slide, blow. Slide, blow, Slide, NO. It wasn’t a bad idea in principle, but in practice it was utterly ridiculous. And half the time, the notes never played correctly! Totally maddening. In fact…y’know what Spirit Flute? Blow me. You’re the reason I quit Spirit Tracks. And…no…no! Don’t you give me that look! There’s no “sorry” here. Not everything can be the Ocarina of Time.
Magic Beans: Much like with the Spirit Flute, the idea of using Magic Beans in the Ocarina of Time to grow vines to access hidden places sounded fine in principle but was dismal in practice. First, once you wasted money buying the beans, you, as young Link only, had to find the special spots in which they would grow. And then you had to make sure you had a free bottle because you needed some water for your specially-planted bean. And then you had to actually go get water. And then you had to water your planted beans just right so as to make them grow. The whole process was so dumb. To hell with those stupid Magic Beans! I had better uses for my four precious bottles anyway.
Hero’s New Clothes: Nothing like getting an item that’s (1) f****** invisible, and (2) eventually results in nothing but a non-change of clothes. Woohoo. Yes, I’m looking straight at you, Wind Waker. I love you but…no.
Michaela: Dominion Rod: Arguably the most useless item in the series, the Dominion Rod is only applicable to controlling statues, which makes for a pretty fun boss fight. But outside of the dungeon, it serves no purpose. I always wished I could toss if off the Bridge of Eldin and never see it again.
Ball and Chain: The Ball and Chain sounds like a cool idea, but watching Link struggle to swing that thing quickly changed my mind. It’s way too heavy, and not exactly practically for a lot of different reasons – like why can’t I just use a bomb instead? What can a Ball and Chain do that a Bomb can’t? It’s the ultimate question of the 21st Century.
Spinner: I’ve been noticing a pattern with these items. They’re involved in some pretty fun, memorable boss fights, but following their demise, they immediately become useless and a waste of space. If I can’t use the Spinner anywhere else except on the fancy Spinner wall, then I’m not going to like it very much.
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Gray Areas 
The spinner always felt like a missed opportunity to me, you couldn’t even go get it upgraded to have it work better on normal terrain, just a very specific item that I never see till Hyrule Warriors.