Collecting badges is probably the most addictive feature of Foursquare; an opportunity to revert to the Scouts and Brownies mentality of completing relatively pointless tasks to earn kudos in the form of a little patch. I think I had a Footpath badge, among others, which recognised my ability to successfully walk on concrete, a skill that has served me well throughout my subsequent life.

Foursquare badges reward users for more adult, but often no more difficult tasks than sidewalk perambulation. The Adventurer is earned once you have checked in at 10 venues, the Player Please is awarded if you check in three times with a member of the opposite sex and I’m on a boat! is – well – pretty obvious. They may not be hard to attain, but they provide Foursquare with the crucial element of competition to out-socialise your friends and out-cool your frenemies. Not all Foursquare badges are easy to come by however,  so here are a few of the more unusual offerings.

Foursquare created the Banksy Fan badge to coincide with the premiere of the infamous graffiti artist’s film Exit Through the Gift Shop. The badge features the iconic Banksy rat wearing a pair of star-shaped sunnies.

In April 2010 a 15-year-old and a 44-year-old were racing to be the first to use Foursquare to check-in at the North Pole. Youth prevailed over experience in the extreme geek-off when Parker Liautaud unlocked the Last Degree Badge. Unfortunately for thrill-seeking Foursquarers, the badge was a one-off offer and will not be repeated.

The Groupie badge is a reward for hardcore users. To unlock it you need to collect six business cards from Foursquare employees and enter them into foursquare.com/bizcard. Made for the South By Southwest (SXSW) music conference in 2010, Foursquare Lead Designer, Mari Sheibley said “it encouraged people to come up and say hello and talk with us, which is always fun.”

Another SXSW badge was the Tarantino, and it caused much smartphone angst as Foursquarers scrambled to find the key to unlock it. Most assumed that attending a Tarantino screening would do the trick, some guessed that attending the panel that Tarantino was scheduled to speak at would be the key (luckily they were wrong, because he never showed up). How the badge was actually achieved is still a grey area, Sheilbley insists it was unlocked by a few – but it had nothing to do with proximity to the Pulp Fiction director.

During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Sheibley noticed that fans were mimicking the infamous vuvuzela ‘BZZZZZZZZ!’ and shouting ‘GOOOOOOOAL’ when their team scored. Her response was to create the World Cup badge, unlockable once you had shouted 10 ‘ZZZZZZZZZ’s.

Do you use Foursquare? Are you competitive user? Have you unlocked any rare badges? Let us know.

Via Mashable.