Gotta admit I’d watch in rapt amazement every time the aerosol hair in a can for bald guys infomercial came on.
Like a combover, but technologically hipper!
I bought the Bare Minerals makeup line in a retail store after watching the infomercial. My brother’s SIL is a production designer for one of the big houses which packages the exercise solution of the month. She has a fascinating job working the angles of how many to produce, what celebrity to cast, and how much to spend on packaging the entire thing.
Watching for the weirder products is understandable. But who the hell thought that producing an infomercial for CLOROX was a good idea? What, do people not know what BLEACH does anymore? Or perhaps it was an attempt to counter the similar tactics of the Oxy-type products?
We bought a Ginsu!
My mother watched them quite often; she seemed to find them entertaining. I don’t think she ever bought anything from them, however.
I watch some of them to try and catch what the scam (for lack of a better word) is. It’s like trying to figure out how a magic trick is done. Like the knife commercial where he’s trying to show how well his Ultra-mega-ninja Ginsu 9000 cuts through a loaf of bread. With the knife he’s selling, he uses a feather-light touch, and draws the knife back-and-forth across the bread. Then he takes an evil knife, non-serated (which sucks to use on bread anyway), and squashes the bread down to a half-inch before he even tries to start cutting it. I don’t know if it’s a decent knife, but I don’t buy something when I can see how the seller is trying to bullshit me.
And the blonde on the Little Giant ladder commercial is wicked cute.
Somebody’s watching them.
Back when Fox grabbed the rights to NFC football away from CBS, our local CBS station basically gave up on Sunday afternoons during the fall and winter, and programmed a solid block of infomercials. The station liked them so much they wound up running them throughout the year.
The head of the local NBC station called out the head of the CBS station for running infomercials while the other stations were running typical Sunday afternoon sports – golf, basketball, stuff like that. The CBS guy responded that his infomercials were getting higher ratings than the NBC station’s golf/iceskating/etc. Sunday programming.
I love infomercials. I’ve never bought anything from them, but they’re so predictable and great.
“Ooh, look at this guy! He’s doing that the old fashioned way! Look at how it hurts his back/makes a mess/twists his nuts in a knot/unintentionally shaves his dog!”
If only there were a better way…
“Hark! This other guy is doing the same thing, but with Product X! Yes, Product X, the combination enema/mouthwash that makes this arduous chore a thing of the past. Why, other guy even ENJOYS the task now!”
Love 'em. I watch them. I should be killed.
I watch them every now and then…and then I hop over to this website, to read about how crappy the products are.
I watch them with an eye to the production rather than the product. The Magic Bullet is fascinating to watch the characters and their crappy dialog (love the old lady with the unlit cigarette butt with an inch of ashes hanging out of her mouth for the full thing). I also try to figure out how they can spend a half hour hawking the simplest product (knives, dicing unit, insoles…).
My SIL on the other hand seems to think that the products are terrific! She is contantly ordering crap off the TV. She’s got Proactiv, George Foreman Grill, hair curlers, exercise units, Columbia House, etc. The only time she feels bad about getting stuff is when she sees it cheaper in the store. She got the GF Grill (2 for $90) and then saw them at Liquidation World for $20.
Apparently she is the target audience. I can only hope that my kids grow up with the fascination of spectacle, instead of the obedience of the call to action.
There is now a store called “As Seen On TV” with all this [del]crap[/del] products on display. It’s neat to go in to see and play with the items. Some are worse than they seem, although some are not as bad,
I LOVE the Magic Bullet infomercial. On weekend mornings, it’s often the best thing on the tube!
I’ve never bought any infomercial item, though I did buy the big lycra tube-shaped pasta boiler from a CVS Pharmacy. It was marked down to five bucks, and it works surprisingly well for spaghetti.
EDIT: This thing.
Lately I’ve been singing along to the Soul Train-style music DVD one and watching the Magic Bullet one (well, ‘watching.’ As mentioned, it’s more a matter of not turning the television off once the ‘real’ programming is done).
Have never bought anything, though I have been tempted to buy a food dehydrator and turn every edible substance in the house into some sort of leather.
Perfect. That is exactly why I watch them.
Note that there’s always the freebies that are included in the 7 easy payments of only $39.95. And then, then there’s the "If you call now! or “The next 50 callers will also receive…”
Highly entertaining.
I also love the one for the Magic Bullet. It’s insanely entertaining, if only for the characters.
It makes me want one, but I’m always able to stop myself by saying, “Wait - I already have a blender. And this is just a mini-blender.”
But the commercial is fun to watch.
I watched a fascinating documentary about infomercials (darned if I can remember the name, though). One of the surprising details was that most infomercials, at least a few years ago, were purposely given the late night time slot to catch all the viewers who were up late watching out of boredom, and were perhaps more suceptible to the hard sell.
I normally don’t watch them, but I once did watch an infomercial about Slick 50 or some type of oil additive.
I watched because I was fascinated by the way the huckster was able to spool up the group of gearheads on scene for the demonstration.
They ran an engine with Slick 50 in it, then drained the oil and ran it some more. Other engines without the additive seized up, but this one kept going.
Great. Good product.
But the taciturn gearheads, while interested, didn’t show any real enthusiasm until the huckster started jumping up and down. “Isn’t this the coolest thing ever!!!?”, then the gearheads caught the vibe and started doing the same.
There was a Stanley Milgram thing going on, in a “follow the leader” sort of way.
(I’m a “gearhead” so I don’t consider the term derogatory.)
We love to watch them and they’re sometimes more entertaining than the regular programming you see on prime time. We don’t buy the stuff from the broadcasts though we did get a couple things from the “As seen on TV” store (the Tupperware®-like containers on the spinning rack. Actually works pretty good!).
One time my FIL went to a charity party with a buffet line. The man at the carving table looked familiar and my FIL realized that it was the Spanek roaster guy (he was volunteering his services for the charity). He said that his sales increased almost 10 times within a couple months of the infomercials first airing.
I think you’re remembering GadgetMania: The History and Evolution of the Infomercial, which was shown on the Discovery Channel. I’d love to see this again.
I kind of started with the best one ever and it’s all been downhill from there.
I admit I find myself wanting Hercules Hooks and Forearm Forklifts, though.
I used to always have the tv on during late night study sessions, so I saw a loooooot of infomercials.
But there was one which I happened into halfway through and I never saw again. 
I don’t know what the name of the stuff was, but the part I saw was for gadgets to turn your food into…well, stuff. There was this corkscrew-attached-a-cutting-blade thing. You shoved it into things like cucumbers or potatos and turned it around and around, spiral cutting the cucumber or potato. And then you could stretch the food out like a slinky or turn it into a ring, or cut through the spiral pile and have individual slices.
And there was a gadget to turn radishes into roses. And something to turn watermelons or cantalopes into scalloped edged serving bowls…a set of knives, maybe?
Anyway, I was fascinated. I didn’t want the gadgets – who needs a potato slinky? – but I couldn’t stop watching.
One of the great disappointments in my life is that I never got to see the rest of that infomercial.