A few weeks ago, I saw one that starred two midgets plugging a get-rich-quick thing and one of them was inexplicably holding a plunger…
I watched an infomercial for those weight loss pills. It starred a lady with really tall hair. Not so amazing in and of itself, but the lady was sweating, breathing shallowly and was generally strung out. How 'bout those diet pills, folks?
Yep. That was it.
I’ll second “Nads.” WTF were they thinking?
Watching that insufferably smug bastard Ron Popeil get his dome sprayed with fake hair in a can (from the people who brought you real-hair-in-a-can, of course) was pretty funny, if only because he strikes me as, well… an insufferably smug bastard.
Huh huh huh. They said ‘nads.’ Huh huh huh. (Has making a Beavis and Butthead reference become ‘retro’ yet, or is it still just dated and stale?)
I like the one with the 40-something women getting there faces shocked with what is basically a low-voltage cattle prod - making their facial muscles twitch (in an effort to tone said muscles).
They look like Jack Nicholson drinking whiskey in Easy Rider.
Flowbee.
Is that how you spell the brand name of this absurd hair-cutting vacuum-attachment?
Did anyone ever see the Danny Bonaduce Show. He’s the kid from the Partridge Family. I can’t remeber what he was selling but he it staged just like a talk show with a monologue, he had a band and minor celebrities (beauty contest winners, extras on soap operas etc). He seems to have embraced the rich tradition of child star ruination. Looks like he should be running a sizable chunk of 1920s Chicago.
I saw this great one where they were selling this thing to plug into your milk container so you wouldn’t spill. This goofy looking guy couldn’t pour milk!
Oh wait a second.
I have no idea what the product was, but I was mesmerized as a well-spoken British man proceeded to destroy a police car - including setting it on fire - and then rubbed a little of the product on the exterior to show what a nice job it did restoring the finish…
I don’t remember exactly what the commercial was for, but it was some kind of device that you could clamp kitchen utensils to, in order to make them work better. It had some sort of suction thing that would cause the chopper, shredder, blender, mixer, whatever to stick to the counter, providing the needed resistance to do the task.
I guess the clamp thing was kind of helpful, but what was funny was when they attached a bowl to it. To show what happens when you don’t have this clamp, and you try to stir things in a bowl, they had some guy stirring something in a bowl, and the contents just kept flying everywhere, because of course that is exactly what happens when you don’t clamp your bowl onto the counter!
That crazy old guy with the vegetable juicer. He scares the hell out of me.
You know, that was one of my favorite infomercials. There were so many idiotic things that were said during the program. My favorite one was uttered by the moron lady who runs around like a 1960’s houswife on speed:
Old Man: “How does it taste?”
Dumb Lady: “Great! It’s better than great…it’s really good!”
I laughed for a full 2 seconds from that one.
Heem “Sell me a piece of crap for 130 easy payments of only $9.99” Bo
My favorite thing about the comercial is that he has to put almost a pound of veggies into that juicer to get one stinking glass of that crap. Seems like you would come off better (and cheaper) just eating the damn vegetables in the first place.
A commercial for some lawfirm that specializes in workers comp suits. It shows a guy getting injured on the job (a bunch of boxes fall on him). Next he’s at the doctor’s office with the company insurance-approved doctor. The poor guy has his arm in a sling and his head in a bloody bandage. The doctor says, “You can go back to work tomorrow.” The best bit is at the end when the doctor goes down a row of beds in a ward. Each guy looks worse than the last. The doctor checks his list: “Back to work, back to work, back to work.” One guy is apparently unconscious in his bed. Another patient says, “But doc, he’s dead.” The doctor checks his list again and says, “Restricted duty.”
Anything with the guy who looks like Al Gore, on the set of what looks like the Larry King Show.
You’ve never truly lived until you’ve seen the SANTO GOLD infomercial. Santo Gold was the Ed Wood of infomericals: you gotta love anyone who makes a infomerical to sell crappy gold jewelry AND promote a self-produced space aliens/wrasslin’ movie! More on it here:
This article doesn’t even hint at the whole tragic story that is Santo Gold.
-How can you have a funny infomercial thread without mentioning Matthew Lesko, that nutjob in the suit with all the question marks all over it telling you how you can get all this free money from the government? A Libertarian fashion designers worst nightmare. (By the way, I’ve heard from a few people that bought his books that it’s of course nearly impossible to get that money once you go through all the red tape)
-I’ll second the spray on hair. By the way, there’s a story floating around Philly that former Eagles coach Buddy Ryan was on one time getting his head sprayed. Can anyone verify this? While I heard a sports talk radio host swear he saw it one night, it smells of “Urban Legend”.
-If you are ever in Orlando, make sure you check out the Family Auto Mart Show.
It’s actually a clever gimmick- they’ve got these fat guys doing these really, really bad sketches for 30 minutes, but they’ve become so popular that they actually have lined up sponsors to pay for THEIR commercial!
-In PA, we had this old timer Dutchie pimping these 500 piece tool sets. You’d end up getting something like $1000 of tools for three easy payments of $19.95. And if that wasn’t enough, why he’ll throw in this set of wrenches for free!
-I remember the first time I saw Tony Robbins. I thought it was a joke- here was a guy who looked like a bad model telling me how I can change my life! It wasn’t until I researched the guy I realized he was a pretty good salesman and speaker.
I met a guy who did an infomercial. He said that while some people have become rich off them, the odds are that you will lose money, when you calculate how much it costs to produce the show, pay the manufacturer of the product or pay to have it made yourself, and to set up the phone lines, billing etc, he barely broke even.
It’s nothing compared to the Appliance Direct commercials and infomercials that flood Orlando airwaves. An Asian-American man, apparently the owner, pitches appliances, while his daughter intermittently screams things like “if you didn’t buy direct, you paid too much!” Cut to rapid-zoom scenes of the man standing on each of his seven stores, all painted bright yellow. (“In Ocala by the railroad tracks!”) Then, back to the appliances … then the man’s daughter, screaming something else, then more appliances, then the stores. Repeat for half an hour.
Saw the commercials when I was visiting my mother in Melbourne. Know exactly what you are talking about!! 