Aircraft engineers have, over the years, been able to merge form and function, to produce planes of remarkable elegance and efficiency. Then there are these misfits. Yes, more than a few garage aviation enthusiasts and fringe manufacturers have tried their hand at designing and flying their own aircraft, more often than not, with amusing effect. But don’t forget, it was a pair of tinkerers out of North Carolina called the Wright Brothers, who got us airborne in the first place.

Party Balloon Arm Chair

Every child has wondered whether enough party balloons gathered together might actually carry them off into the sky, but 48-year-old Oregon gas station owner, Kent Couch, actually did something about it. Couch attached 160 extra-large helium-filled party balloons to an old lawn chair, strapped himself in, and then proceeded to fly more than 200 miles from his home in central Oregon to Idaho. He kept cherry Kool-Aid in pouches as ballast, which he dumped to rise higher. To descend he shot out balloons with a Red Ryder BB gun. His wife told reporters ””He’s crazy. It’s never been a dull moment since I married him.” We tend to agree with her.

Skybike

Still under development by entrepreneur Sam Bousfield, the Skybike is designed to be a hybrid of a motorcycle and airplane. The three-wheeled, bullet-shaped cycle, telescopes its wings from out of the chassis at the pull of a lever. A rear-mounted push-prop will power the plane. If Bousfield’s design ever gets off the ground (pardon the pun), he hopes to sell it as a kit to aviation enthusiasts for only $50,000.

AVE Mizar (a.k.a. the Flying Pinto)

The AVE Mizar seemed like such a brilliant idea: attach a pair of wings and engine from a Cessna Skymaster to the body of a Ford Pinto to form a flying car, the perfect commuter transport of the future. In 1973, a tragic accident during the testing phase, killed the craft’s designer Henry Smolinski and his pilot, Harold Blake. Perhaps using the Ford Pinto, which ranked on a recent Forbes magazine list of the worst cars of all time, may have been the first mistake.

Martin Jetpack

While not technically a jetpack (with no jet engines, it’s more like a helicopter), and not even a pack per se (it’s much too heavy to wear while walking), this device from New Zealand’s Martin Aircraft Co. nevertheless comes closest to fulfilling all those Rocketeer dreams. While still in testing stages, it should theoretically be able to fly to an altitude of 8,000 feet, at a speed of 60 miles per hour, and go for 30-minutes on a tank of fuel.

Moller Skycar

Paul Moller has been trying to design a flying car for years now, sinking close to $200 million into the project. With his M400, he may finally be getting close. The design features four rotating ducted fans that will allow the craft to hover and take off and land vertically. Moller claims that when it’s finished, the M400, with an estimated $1 million price tag, will have a top speed of 360 miles per hour, a maximum altitude of 36,000 feet and a range of 750 miles. It will seat four and be easy enough to fly that someone with no piloting knowledge will be able to get behind the controls. For now however, the only completed flight tests have seen the M400 hovering while tethered to a crane.