We played with the worst apps in the world, so you don't have to

There are now over 1,300,000 apps on the iOS App Store; the Google Play Store is home to around the same number of Android apps right now. What we're trying to say is - there are a lot of apps out there, and unsurprisingly, a lot of them are crap.

We're sure you've stumbled on some stinkers yourself, but we hope you've not come across any as bad of these. You see, at TechRadar we're making it our mission to scour the underbelly of both app stores to find the truly terrible, the truly disgusting, and the truly WTF, all in the name of technology.

Each week we'll be nominating an app that deserves the crown of "worst of the worst", with an aim to complete a list of the ten truly most terrible apps we've ever seen.

So let us begin our dangerous journey through the bowels of humanity's ideas. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.

1. Pet Baby

iOS
Price: Free

Here's how I imagine the meeting at Trashicon HQ happened the day the idea for Pet Baby was born.

"Hey guys, people like sharing pictures of their pets. I think I've spotted what they call a 'market opportunity'."

"You sure have, Jerry. But our app budget is focused on babies right now. Babies are funny, remember?!"

"But wait, why don't we combine the two?"

*The room falls deadly silent. A single bead of sweat runs down Jerry's forehead. He's eyeing up his desk across the room, mentally packing up his belongings*

"Careful Jerry, that's the sort of thinking that'll get you a… PROMOTION."

*Everyone claps*

And thus, Pet Baby was born. An app that asks the question that's been on the collective lips of humanity since the dawn of man: "What would your pet look like… as a human baby?" Given that most babies look the same, the answer is probably 'just like every other baby ever', right?

WRONG. Your pet baby is a mutant child that will devour your soul.

You see, rather than making any effort whatsoever to morph your dog's face into some sort of funny canine-baby mashup, the app lazily hacks the two together with an opacity tool to create what can only be described as a pure evil.

But does the fun stop there? Oh no. No, once your rabid demon child has been conceived, you can expose your friends and family to the horror via Facebook and Twitter.

Just look at some of the beauties we came up with:

Then we tried it with some humans. That should work better, right? WRONG AGAIN.

And God forbid the app ever does produce anything looking mildly sentient, you can expect something like the following:

This app had zero reviews at the time of publishing.