All right, another year of inventions good and bad!
George Foreman was an interesting addition- especially since he kept saying yes. My thing was looking to see which invention he would say no to.
My problem with My Empathy Buddy last year was that it sounded too much like a sexy woman, which wasn’t the right voice for a simple mantra of “Everything is going to be all right.” Now it sounds like an army of Stepford Wives, which, combined with the added phrases “Hear my voice” and “I mean it,” gives it a creepy Borg feeling. “Everything is going to be all right! Join us!”
I changed the channel about 15 minutes is; too many close-ups and obvious attempts to build “tension”. Don’t waste my time trying to be dramatic, just show me some cool and/or amusing inventions, idiot.
I thought the little kid’s diaper wipes were a great idea. Except that he blew the pitch. They need to come with the diapers, not sold separately and then stuck on. That strikes me as work. But when I had a baby, if I could have just grabbed a couple of diapers when going out with the kid, knowing that everything I needed to change the baby was attached, I’d have bought them.
And the English guy is exactly right about ‘My Therapy Buddy’. If you really need a stuffed animal whispering ‘everything is going to be all right’ to you, then most assuredly everything isn’t all right. The dolls themselves were kind of cute. He should make the small-sized ones, change the voice message to something more kid-like, and sell them to chldren.
The guy with the bicycle hubcaps was nuts. Probably schizophrenic or something.
They really should weed out the people that have ideas to make current inventions better, like the diaper wipes, from the actual inventions. To me an invention is something new, something we haven’t seen before. And for that reason I also think a talking doll is not a new invention. I can’t believe they sent him on this time. Of course if they weeded out all the non-inventions before the show then they wouldn’t be left with many actual inventions so they couldn’t drag the show out as long.
I admit I pretty much tuned it out after a while, I just can’t take all the pseudo-drama. Did anyone point out to the guy with the Christmas Tree Angel that puts out fires that the fire would likely have spread to nearby furnishings before the Angel would release it’s 2 whole gallons of water to put out the tree fire, or did he just get a free pass because he had a sad story and cried?
They really should screen out appeals to emotion, like the firefighter, the children and the mentally disturbed (like the therapy doll guy and the bicycle hubcap guy). The first guy was weird in that it took him a long time to get to actually telling what the invention was and what it was meant to do. These people really should understand how to deliver an elevator pitch.
I hate all that heart-tugging crap too, but there’s a good reason why most of us refer to this show as American Sob Story.
On another note: What's with this trend in having one British fellow on a panel or in charge of things (think Simon Cowell and Gordon Ramsay as well as Peter Jones)? Is it just so people can pitch a fit about the grouchy furriner?
I’m tired of the grouchy Englishmen too. Are the backers of all these kinds of shows the same group of Brits or something?
It’s a great idea but there’s already a brand of feminine napkins on the market that have sanitary wipes attached, so it’s not really new or original.
I felt sorry for the kid going in there all alone, especially when they showed another kid with parents right beside her. I wonder if the mom thought it would be character-building or something to send that little boy in all alone?
I like the fireman’s idea but am wondering, too, if 2 gallons can douse a tree fire before it spreads. Maybe the idea is to delay it just enough for people to hear the alarm and get out safely.
I figure if this show is on for another 20 years, they will always include at least one tearjerker contestant each season. Last year was the guy with the sandbagging scooper, if I remember correctly, and this year is the fireman.
About 20 years ago when TikkiDad was driving across country to visit his old stomping grounds, I got him a device that hooked over your ear. If you started to fall asleep and your head tilted, a mercury switch inside would set off an alarm. It looked like one of those big, old-fashioned hearing aid and wasn’t pretty but it was a far sight better looking than all those cheesy straps and clips that guy was pushing last night.
Oh, and he actually quit his lucrative day job to work on that for all those years? Methinks there were other factors that caused him to part ways with his jobs. Cue Twilight Zone music.
Actually, Simon Cowell is one of the creators of this show, along with Peter Jones (the British judge), so I think the grouchiness is deliberately modeled on Simon Cowell’s American Idol image.
And whatever happened to that sandbagging scooper? It seemed like a pretty good idea.
I thought the spinning bicycle hubcaps were a novel idea but the guy was so nutty about it and presented it in a totally wrong way.
If he came on an explained “how spinning hubcaps on cars are all the rage right now and I’ve designed them so kids can have them on their bikes” he may have had a chance.
But to describe it as a world altering invention that would save lives???
The guy was a total loon, and should not have been put through to the judges. That could have turned dangerous.
I wish they’d shown more of George Foreman during that, though. Even in the tiny bit we saw, I could see the benignity leave his face, and the cold calculations of the fighter start to appear. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t escort the guy out himself because he was afraid he was dealing with the kind of nut who would like to take a swing at the heavyweight champion. I totally believe he had the other judge’s back, though.
It’s possible that scene was edited. I figure the guy said all that stuff at one time, and didn’t just stand there like Marcel glaring at a bouncer. Then it was pieced together in separate sentences after pauses for diminished chords and shots of the judges. It had forced written all over it for me.
Yeah, that seems to be a staple type shot in these shows. Edit together judges and contestants staring at eachother within an uncomfortable silence.
Totally forced and manufactured.