So…you’re saying you want four of those pillows?
Double posts, double products!
Just give’m to him half-price.
there are two older ones that i remember watching with disturbed fascination…
one was for those ‘hairdini’ or hairogami’ things. i remember seeing these leopard print snakelike items twisted and embedded in someone’s hair and it was almost disturbing enough for a snake-phobic like me to wig out. (seeing them dumped in the laundry machine was pretty bad too…) yet the people in the infomercial were not disturbed in the slightest… just smiled in this very eerie way…
another was for that ‘men are from mars, women from venus’ book (or however the title really goes). the author had a talk show setup and a woman is telling the audience something about herself and her relationships. the author pats her on the shoulder (or hugs her?) and says, “that was such a special share!!”. maybe the guy has helped some people with their relationships, but i find him really freaky!
There’s an infomercial I’ve seen in Korea that interests me because I can’t figure it out.
A man dressed in a suit applies brightly colored athletic tape to a young woman in a swimsuit.
Where exactly does he put the tape, you may ask. Well, across her shoulderblade, along her calf, along the sole of her foot. Usually he places a bright pink Y-shaped piece of tape, about a foot long, and stretches it out a little. Then he applies bright blue pieces of tape across the ends (to anchor the pink tape?) Oh yeah, the bathing suit is a plain black one-piece - very modest. And the woman doesn’t speak or move unless the man is changing her position so he can tape her up some more.
I suppose it’s some kind of muscle therapy, since the guy usually puts the tape along an axis of a muscle group. The trouble is, I can’t figure out what good this kind of treatment would do. And why are there two colors of tape? Are they different?
It’s entirely possible that this guy is a quack that has come up with a spiel to unload colored tape at a huge markup, but since I don’t know what he’s saying, I can’t tell.
Anybody have any ideas?
I personally like when you get to see the close up cartoony images of how the product works. Like when it’s a zit medicine and they show the real close up image of about five pours of skin with the dirt in them. Then it shows the dirt go away. And I also like seeing the razor ones where you see 5 hairs real close up. I dunno, maybe I’m a freak and I get happy when I see skin way close up in a cartoonish format. Someone else tell me they secretly enjoy seeing those.
voguevixen, I remember the horrid stungun infomercial you described. It ran for while on one of our local channels, lurid and depressing. I read on a website devoted to infomercials, that one was later edited because of all the complaints over the exploitive nature of the original.
My all time favorite was one for Santo Gold jewelry, from the late 80s. So odd it was practically art. The show was promoting this line of cheesy jewelry sales kits, you were supposed to become a Santo Gold distributor, kind of like selling Tupperware. But it also plugged a movie made to promote the jewelry, a wrestling/horror movie/comedy called Blood Circus. The clips of the film were laughably bad: high school drama level acting, bizarre talking angels, the fakest severed head I’ve ever seen in a movie, and Santo Gold himself singing the “hit song” from the movie. I recognized several real wrestlers in the clips shown, although the show didn’t mention any names. For shame guys. Oh, how I wish I had taped this TV monstrocity. What little I could find out about Santo Gold and the movie online sounds like it would make a pretty good comedy itself.
I love knife informercials. From the ginsu to the rock and chop, they suck me in every time. I have never bought any knives that way and I hardly ever cook but I find them fascinating. The way they slice tomatoes so thin and fresh baked bread, it is just amazing.
I love any involving food! Remember the human calculator? He was pretty cool. Don’t like the Real Estate ones. Makes me wonder how legal they are.
My favorite was for a paint/varnish remover called QRB (apparently for “Quickly Restores Beauty”). You could dump some of this stuff on a painted table and scrape away the ugly old paint with cardboard, exposing the beautiful wood underneath. Then, you could take the paint that was soaked in the funk and use it again! Just put it on another painted or varnished item, let it set, and the QRB was totally reusable.
Plus, it was a double value since you could also use it as a varnish, simply by adding color caplets and shaking the tin.
Amazing.
(Also, I believe the woman who did the demos on the infomercial was the daughter of the dead inventor. I really wonder how much of that was true.)
Oh MAN. I thought I had blotted Santo Gold from my memory. Wow. It was so oddly fascinating. It was on ALL the time. The dude would sing/yell, “It’s Saaaaaaaaannnnto Goooooold!” How freakish. I never heard anyone else ever mention seeing it until now. How bizarre.
I don’t know if they offered it with that or not, but does anyone else remember the jewelry offer, I don’t even remember what the main item for sale was, but if you called within the next whatever time length, you got the ‘scandinavian snowball ring’ absolutely free!
I remember Linda Chae cosmetics… that one was interesting. Anyone else remember her?
My current one to laugh at is ‘bare minerals’. It’s all this makeup, that’s all just pots of powder. One is called… the exact name escapes me… like, candlelight-izer or glow-izer… But it is natural, you see, all natural minerals from the earth – not chemicals. Hmm… I guess the earth has no chemicals in it. That was big news to me.
It’s all just powder. Uh-hunh. Great. To put it on, you have to use a special brush, and you have to blot and tap in the lid, in this really special way.
They actually say things like this…
Product Inventor: All the chemicals in makeup are so fake… like wearing rubber on your face… like a mask! Like plastic!
Host Chick: Ooh, that’s bad, like smothering!
PI: Yes! But our product is all natural, like cotton or silk, so it’s so smooth and natural on your face!
HC: (rubbing skin) Ooh, yes, silk, like silk, soft, like silk…"
And on and on. I guess. I usually can’t stand any more…
My second favorite was for the one that featured spray paint to cover up baldness. The beauty of it was that it actually seemed like a good idea at 3 AM when I had insomnia and was up watching infomercials.
My favorite infomercial was for some exercise bike. I forget the product, but the hostest of the infomercial was a gorgeous ex-Raiderette cheerleader named Kimiko Tanaka, who made the infomerical really worth watching, if you know what I mean.
I like that guy becuase of his excitement level. His name is Billy Mays. He also does the OrangeGlo, and I’ve seen him doing another product but I don’t remember which.
Speaking of excited, I like to watch that Gazelle Freestyle one too. Picture Billy Mays, but ten times as excited with blond curly hair. The Gazelle guy is a freak. It’s fun to watch him.
There’s also my buddies Tom and Randy from the Bowflex infomercial. I hunt for the bowflex infomercial on Saturday mornings. Though they have a new one now that’s not as good, as it no longer features Randy. Hmm, actuall Randy was the one that was totally excited to be working out on the Bowflex.
I guess I like infomercials where the seller is really excited about the product.
An honorable mention goes to Ron Popeil of course, with his Ronco Rotisserie. That food looks soooooooooo good.
Hey, bwk, don’t you be dissing on my bare minerals. That foundation powder just happens to be the greatest thing since sliced bread on my skin. I bought mine from Ulta’s however. I have bad luck when I purchase anything from an infomercial.
I haven’t seen it in a long time, but the infomercial for Flowbee was surreal! And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre, they started using it on the dog!!.
Have any of you ever had a dog you could get within six feet of with a running vacuum cleaner, much less six inches??
Is that the big bearded guy who yells all the time? That guy gives me the heebie jeebies; I hear his voice in my nightmares. I saw him the other day yelling at me to buy one of those dent-remover-suction-cup things. It troubled me because I always thought he was really into cleaning products, and now it just seems like he’s whoring himself out.
My favorite infomercial of all time is for the Infusion cooker. It was a pressure cooker from France that could alter the laws of time or something like that. The ad was hosted by Florence Henderson and some woman from a soap opera, but the best part was the audience. At one point, a woman from the audience says:
I Always liked the ones for those knives that never dull even if you saw into drywall with them one day i will consider bying them just to see how many pieces of drywall i can cut before i ruin the knives and i dont even know where i can get my hands on stuff like that to waste my knives on!
Well, I’d have to say the Bassomatic or the Floor Wax/Dessert Topping ones are my favorite…
But seriously, I see plenty of infomercials on OCN here in Korea, whilst I wait for the next Enlish-movie-with-Korean-subtitles to come on. I think my favorite ones have beautiful Korean models standing around, showing off the latest in women’s underwear…
Whoops, is that drool on my keyboard?
I have actually seen a product I could see myself buying though… They advertise this huge air matress that you can take on camping trips and what not. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen an infomercial advertise an item that I could find useful.
Well, I’d have to say the Bassomatic or the Floor Wax/Dessert Topping ones are my favorite…
But seriously, I see plenty of infomercials on OCN here in Korea, whilst I wait for the next Enlish-movie-with-Korean-subtitles to come on. I think my favorite ones have beautiful Korean models standing around, showing off the latest in women’s underwear…
Whoops, is that drool on my keyboard?
I have actually seen a product I could see myself buying though… They advertise this huge air matress that you can take on camping trips and what not. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen an infomercial advertise an item that I could find useful.
I honestly -abhor- this guy and his commercials. He comes across, at least to me, with a “holier-than-thou” type attitude, especially when he -appears- to be glancing down at his washboard abs…
I’d better not say any more–someone might report this to Basedow and he’ll be after me for … is that slander or libel? LOL (yes, I know one is written and one is spoken; I just forget which is written!) I do not like anything about this guy, though!
Also, the commercials for both 'Nads and the Igia (sp?) hair removal systems. I don’t know, but there is just something about seeing them spraying the guys hairy chest and wiping the hair away that is just -too gross-!!! I don’t even want to think about the 'Nads product, where you have to -rip- a cloth off … Gives me the creeps even writing about it! LOL
I don’t really have any favorite infomercials. 
tarragon
Video Professor!
I hate the video professor guy, John Scherer (sp?). Can the guy say the word “product” any more times in that commercial?