April 21, 2026 • 42 mins
Once in a while someone comes up with a solution for a problem we didn’t know we had, and maybe even a problem that didn’t even exist. Even more rarely, the stars align just right so that some crackpot invention captures everyone’s imagination.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio, and.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chalk and
Jerry's here too, and it's time to buckle down and
get serious about some silly inventions that turned out to
be pretty popular.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, man, this takes me right back.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
It does, because this is a super kind of eighties.
But I really associate most of this with the nineties,
don't you.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Oh, I just mean this episode takes me back to
like twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh gotcha? But yeah, sure, yeah, Well, this article is
clearly written around two thousand and nine or twenty ten
by our esteemed colleague Jonathan Strickland esteemed. Oh yeah, there's
loads of esteem going his way from us. We're talking
today about some silly inventions. Typically they were what you
(01:00):
would call direct response TV marketed types of inventions or products, right,
which are what those like the little thing, at least
in the United States, that little red icon that says
as seen on TV mm hmm. Those are basically across
the board direct response TV marketed.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Products, that's right. And by direct response that basically means
we want to make more money, and we'll do that
by making like an infomercial, and instead of the infomercial
saying like and now go to your store and buy
this thing, even though a lot of the stuff you
could find in drug stores and like maybe a bed,
bathroom beyond or something like that. Sure, but generally what
(01:41):
they were trying to do was sell direct to you
get a direct response by putting like an eight hundred
number up you could call an order. So that just
means they get more juice for themselves since they're not
having to sell it to a store.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, and often it's like, yes, of course they wanted
more profit, but they also wanted to be able to
pay off the third mortgage they took out on their
house to get this invention of theirs out.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, maybe public.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You know, there's a lot of these that were just
invented by some person. You know, it's a good idea,
and luckily for them, they took off and became super popular.
So there's one that it wouldn't qualify in any really way,
shape or form as a silly invention, so we didn't
include it on this list. But it is the most
(02:25):
the greatest selling direct response TV marketed product of all time,
far and away, and it's the George Foreman grill. From
what I saw in the last like twenty plus years,
more like thirty years, I think it sold about a
billion dollars worth of product. That is pretty significant. I
(02:49):
don't know if you're counting, but a billion dollars still
means a lot these days.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
It does. I never had a Forman grill. I never
owned one, but I lived with one for a year.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh yeah. Did it pay a share of the rent?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah? No, I think one of my roommates had one year,
I feel like in college. And you know, if you
don't know what those words, the whole trick is. It's
like any kind of standard Panini press or something, except
they raised up one side of it so Greece could
trickle out of it. And that was about the only difference,
I think, right.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, But the thing is it really works. You mean,
and I have one and we use it basically anytime
we cook burgers, we use it. And I mean, like
there's no loss of taste, but there's a ton of
like fat that's just just strips right out. So we
use ours pretty frequently.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
That's funny. I don't think I knew that you guys
had a Foreman.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
We do. And one other thing about this too. This
is another thing too with direct response products. Most people
think George Foreman invented that grill because he refers to
it in the ads as his grill. He did not.
It was already an existing product and he was approached
to basically be the pitch man for it, and very
wisely he said, sure, I'll do it, but you have
(04:03):
to give me forty five percent of the profits.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah. He made a lot of money on miss things.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Just crazy gobs of money. Good for him, And there's
a similar So moving into our list now, Chuck, and
this is in very much stuff you should know tradition.
Not a top ten, a not a full ten top
ten list, I guess is what we call this kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah. I don't know that we've ever done ten, and
we're never gonna.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
We better not. If we did. At some point we
need to find that episode and go edit out one
of them.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, or maybe that's like our very last episode will
be a true ten.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Oh yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
That'll be the tell everyone will know we could.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Do a top ten of our top ten episodes.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, that sounds it sounds like a great way to finish.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Actually, so the segue I guess from George Foreman to
the first on our list is the idea that people
tended to think Suzanne Summers may have invented the thigh Master.
She did not. Just like George Foreman, she was approached
to become the pitch person for an existing invention, and
(05:15):
she thanked her lucky stars all the way to the
bank later on that she agreed to it.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
That's right. If you have a certain age, you may
not even know who Susanne Summers is, or you may
know her as the thigh Master lady. If you're a
little bit older, if you're in our generation and above,
you know her as Chrissy from the great She's Raids
the Sheriff Sitcom threes Company.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Oh Three's Company.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, yeah, great show.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
She was also and she She's the Sheriff. Though, that
was a good one.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I didn't I've never even heard of that show.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
It was the kind of show that would come on
at three point thirty pm Saturday, right after reruns of
Mama's Family.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, I've really never heard of She's the shaff I
take it to the Sheriff.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
She was the sheriff. Okay, it was a good show.
But yes, of course Three's Company Chrissy is who she
is vastly far and away better known for. But by
that I mean that was like the late seventies, early
eighties when she left Three's Company. Apparently she was making
one hundred and twenty grand less an episode than Jack
John Ritter, so she's like, I'm out of here, and
(06:22):
there was kind of a lull in her career between
then and I guess nineteen ninety one when she came
back with a vengeance on TV pitching this thigh master.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, pitching the v bar. That's what it was originally
called when a Swedish physical therapist named doctor Anne Marie
Binstrom invented this thing in the sixties. But they tweaked
it a little bit. They made it look cooler, they
made it a little more colorful, and brought it into
the eighties slash early nineties and approached her to like
you said, like, hey, you know, you're a very recognizable
(06:57):
face and you're into fitness and you're smart lady. She
played a dingbat on Three's Company, But Suzanne Summers is
a very smart woman. Yeah, as evidenced by the perhaps
three hundred million dollars she made on Howkin the thigh
Master and eventually like buying out the partners to where
she outright owned it.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
That's awesome. So you said that this is an existing device, right,
the V bar? Yes, So what it was we should
just say real quick, the thigh master or the V
bar was this kind of device? What would you liken
it too? You know those like paper chip clips?
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, I'm just ready for you to confuse everybody.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Go ahead, Okay, it's like a giant paper chip clip,
but it doesn't open up, so you couldn't clip it
to anything. It's just the squeezing part. So go to
your kitchen right now, get a paper chip clip, break
off the part that opens up, and then put the
little remaining part that's like a V the V bar
between your legs and squeeze. And what you're doing is
(08:01):
using a mini thigh master right now.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
That's right. You do the same thing with your fingers
if you wanted to.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Right. So, they made it pop and like they hid
the spring in the middle, and they gave it some
great coloring. And this was now the thigh Master that
Suzanne Summers was now demonstrating on some very famous TV
ads again starting in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
That's right, And I guess the only other thing we
should mention is that there was a physician on a
lot of these commercials. There was a guy wearing a
lab coat, doctor Herbert L. Gould, who was there to
recommend the thing and saying that he uses it. And
the cherry on top is that doctor Gould was an ophthalmologist.
Is great, not that that doesn't you know, I mean,
(08:48):
still a doctor still used the thing, I guess for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, it's not illegitimate, it's just funny.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Clearly knew Suzanne Summer somehow, probably.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Or they just started picking doctor at random.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Now I think he was probably her optomologist, be my guess.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, you're probably right. I feel like there is one
more thing we should mention about the ad, and that
is the fact that Suzanne Summers appeared in it wearing
leotard like you would think for working out, but also
panteos and high heels, which is the specific kind of.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Look yeah, oh, actually, there is one more thing, because
this is we buried the lead. The probably the most
interesting thing about all of this is that there is
a direct response Hall of Fame and she's in it.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yep. She was inducted in twenty fourteen and rightly so amazing.
Take an early break or move on? No, we got
to move on, Okay, so I say we move on
to the pocket Fishermen and a little bit of a
bio on rom Po Peel, one of the great salesmen
of all time.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Oh yeah, Ron papill. If you had a TV in
the nineteen eighties and nineties and you have seen this, dude,
he was the guy that you know. But wait, there's
more that came from him. He originated that term. He
was popular in the I guess even the like the
fifties and early sixties when he made the first infomercial
(10:15):
for the vegematic. Yeah it's vices, it dices like that
was Ron Papeel. All these sort of tropes of infomercials,
a lot of them come from the great Ron Papel.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, that vegematic infomercial that was like the world's first one.
So yes, he was an infomercial god. And he got
his start. He was always good at selling things. Apparently,
by the time he was sixteen, he was selling his
dad's inventions at flea markets and grossing about five hundred
bucks a day, and that's in nineteen fifty one dollars,
so that's like ten million dollars a day today. And
(10:49):
within just a few years he was a household name
thanks to television. And it was largely built on that
vegematic that apparently his dad invented.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, it was you know, it's a veggie chopper.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, manual food processor, that's it. But because he was
he could get so excited about any wacky, weird invention
and try to make you excited about it, and there
was just no ignoring this guy.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, he had the enshll egg scrambler, and that was
a device where if you didn't want to crack your
egg put it in a bowl and scramble it, you
could use this little device that had a little bent
pin that went inside the eggshell and spun around. Very
interesting invention. And the GLH which stood for Great Looking Hair,
(11:39):
the g LH Formula number nine hair system, which is
basically spray paint for bald spots.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, it was like aerosol spray hair like product or
something like that.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Remember when Rudy Giuliani sweated his sweated that stuff down
the side of his face.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It's amazing. It was like, what a time when he
was on TV in front of like sweating what looked
like shoe polish, and then standing in.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Front of that huh for landscape.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Oh my god, what a time to be alive. Amazing.
It was like SNL come to life.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
It really moment after moment too, something new.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
That Inside the Eggshell Scrambler too. By the way. So
one of the other things about all these products are
their ads are magnificent. Sometimes they're magnificently terrible or just
so absurd or just unintentionally salacious. But this Inside the
Eggshell Scrambler ad had a little kid sitting at a
(12:44):
table and he had been served like runny eggs, and
it's the TV announcer says, no more runny eggs, and
the kid looks at his plate and kind of gags
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Good lord, I love runny eggs.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Well this didn't, and apparently neither did Ron Pop Peel
because he used it as a selling point.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Well, his company, because he was Ron, was called Ronco.
They've done a couple of billion in sales over the year,
and part of that chunk is owed to the pocket
Fisherman which is the one on the list here, and
that's you can still get a pocket fisherman. It is
a is exactly what it sounds like. It's a compact
fishing rod that folds up very small. It has a
(13:26):
little compartment in the handle to hold some stuff, and
it's you know the problem with the pocket fishermen like
it works. If you go on YouTube, there are plenty
of examples of people using this thing and catching like
a decent sized fish. Even it's just not I think
you had in here. Maybe it was strickling. It said,
it solves the problem that we didn't know existed, And
(13:48):
that's kind of true, because you know, if you're going camping,
let's say, or backpacking, and you pack up and break
down a regular sized fishing rod, it straps on the
outside of your backpack, no problem, and it's not really
that big or in the way. So the pocket fisherman
just took it a little further, I.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Guess, yeah, and made it chunkier.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah. They're cool looking.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, they look vaguely like a staple gun. Oh okay,
that you break off the handle from and put between
your legs and squeeze staples into your the insides of
your thighs. That's what its like.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I think we should definitely take that break now, Okay,
all right, we'll be right back with a few more
right after this. All right, we're back, everybody. And next
(14:56):
on the list, we have the shake weight, which is
a you know, a semi legitimate piece of workout equipment.
It's kind of like a dumbell if you picture a dumbell,
but instead of just lifting the dumbbell, you put both
hands on it and move it. And there's a spring
in the middle and the two ends of the dumbbell
like move like when you shake it. A shake weight,
(15:17):
that's what it is. But it became popular not because
of it's how well it worked or how good of
a piece of gear it was. It became popular because
of the clearly obvious sexual innuendo that comes about while operating.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, we don't really need to explain it. Just go
look at a shakewaight, ad, and you'll immediately understand what
we're talking about. Yeah. The thing is, though, Chuck, is
it does seem to have worked right, Like you're basically
instead of you moving, the weight is moving, and what
you're trying to do is stabilize it and what the
(15:56):
shake weight makers were saying is like, hey man, this
requires way more muscle exertion than traditional dumbbell lifting. And
they commissioned some studies that basically said, yeah, this actually
is is correct. Use something more like three hundred percent
more muscle activity than you do with traditional dumbbells, and
(16:16):
in like one sixth of the time too. And plus
I think they had a two and a half pound
version that was for women apparently, and then one that
was double the weight for men. And the two and
a half pound version burned as many calories as a
twelve pound dumbbell. So all of this checked out. But
(16:37):
again that's not really what people were buying the shake
weight for.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
No, it was parodied sort of all over the place,
obviously on stuff like SNL Ellen DeGeneres, and you know,
it's just one of those funny things that hit like
virally early on because of how it looked when you
used it. You know, I imagine it was a pretty
decent cardio workout. I don't think I've ever seen one
in person. Are touched one?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I don't believe I have either.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I lived with one for a while.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Did you know it was? It was a mean drunk.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah, I wonder if these things had if they were
like in actual gems.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
I don't know, Like this is one of the things
like when it comes to exercise equipment, like the thigh
Master two. The Shakewaight was like there was article after
article like it doesn't really work, it actually works, And
from what I saw, the consensus seemed to be that
it definitely did give you a workout, like you could
feel it, but it for as far as strength training,
(17:40):
which is what most people use dumbbells for, it wasn't
going to help you very much for that.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, probably pretty good cardio though, like I said, and
I imagine it was a pretty decent four arm workout, you.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Know, right exactly. But yes, I'm sure most people wouldn't
have been caught dead at the gym using one of
those things. All right, Well that was the Shakeway. Oh
one other thing I saw that in one year, I
think this was two thousand and ten, they made something
like forty million dollars off of it.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Man, these things it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, it is pretty impressive. So what's up next, Charles?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Well, we got to go with big mouth. I couldn't
even say it, right, almost, said Billy big mouth. But
that's just what I called mine. Big mouth. Billy Bass
took the world by storm in the early two thousands.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, it
is if you've ever seen a taxidermied fish mounted on
a plaque on the wall like a big largemouth bass,
(18:40):
imagine if that thing came to life and saying don't worry,
be happy to you.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, this thing had a real evil dead vibe to it.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, I think so. Take Me to the River was
the other one of the two original or not original songs,
but you know what I mean, the first songs that
the Billy Bass played, right.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
And this is in two thousand, when Billy Bass Spentett's
year in the limelight. But the story goes back a
couple of years earlier and the inventor, Joe Peltieri, and
his wife Barbara, were out on a road trip. Joe
was looking for the next big idea. He was a
VP at a novelty company and he was trying to
figure out, you know, what to do. I think he
(19:21):
had kind of hit a dry patch and was a
little concerned. And they ended up at a bass pro
shop on the road trip and his wife, Barbara, knowing
that he was trying to come up with a new idea,
said why not a mounted fish that sings? And Joe said, Barbara,
I could kiss you and she says, well, what are
you waiting for? And they kissed.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
I wonder how that went down. Was she literally walking
around a bass pro shop and saw a taxa dermat
fish and said, wouldn't it be great if that thing
sang don't worry to be happy?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
That's that's how I envision it.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Just what a while? I mean, was she on Paoti?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I don't know. Yeah, maybe she didn't even think of it.
She saw it, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, it's such a weird thing to conjure up, but
I love it and it was a very very fun product,
Like out of all these, to me, this is the
most kind of fun thing that you might want to
have on your wall.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, and I think it's great. They went with don't
worry be happy to take me to the river. You
understand that's pretty funny, but don't worry be happy. That
was like the smash It of nineteen eighty eight, Like
it had been dead and gone for over a decade,
and they brought that thing back with big mouth billy bass.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yes, hard to get that out in it.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, it is. So.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The thing was actually, for what it was was a
fairly sophisticated piece of gear. They had a censor inside
of it so when you walk by it, it would
pick up on that and just automatically start singing. And
he had some designs that he did over the years
that he didn't love, but he really hit on it
when I guess his wife Barbara probably said well, why
(20:54):
don't you have the thing turn its head out and
sort of look at the person they're serenading, And he
was like, by god, Barbara, we've got a kiss.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Again, right, And that was a big deal like that,
Like you did not see things that did that, that
turned away from the plaque and looked at you to sing.
That put the novel in novelty for big mouth billy bass,
if you ask me.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah. So, like I was saying, though, it was a
pretty sophisticated thing the way it all worked. And for
twenty nine ninety five, you know, they took a long
time to build. It wasn't cheap. It was a well
made piece of gear. It was forty days to build one.
So I think Jimmy G. E. M. M. Y was
the company that which still owns the big Mouth Billy
(21:37):
Bass that he was working for. But they didn't know
it was going to be such a big deal. So
and like I said, because it took so long to make,
they ended up shorthanded. And these things were going on
eBay for like three times the amount.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, and I mean twenty nine ninety five in two
thousand was about fifty seven dollars today for a latex
singing fish essentially. But it just it hit just right
and it became like basically the big thing in two
thousand in the United States, and in very short order,
competitors came out and knockoffs came out, and then they
(22:12):
showed up with different songs too. I Will Survive, Stay
in Alive YMCA.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Of course this was.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
During a disco revival, if you'll remember correctly. And I
found I didn't send this to you, I don't think.
But the Royal Palm shuffle Board Club, the Chicago location
along one wall, they have more than seventy big mouth Billy.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Bass Wow Nightmare Fuel that.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
They have choreographed, not even to do to sing in
unison like one will sing the main part and the
others will turn and like sing the chorus and stuff
like that, but they sing Staying Alive. They sing talking
Heads once in a lifetime, and then they sing Choices
by E forty. So it's really something to see if
(22:57):
you go look up the video.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Wow, I gotta check that out. That took some pretty
brilliant wiring, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I can't. I think it is just timing. I don't
know how they did it, but it's really impressive. But yeah,
it is a little haunting for sure, because they have
dead eyes. I never really thought about it before. But
that's the thing. One of the things that makes it
so absurd is the fish looks dead still, you know
what I mean. They didn't try to make it look alive.
(23:25):
It looks like a dead mounted fish come to life
or come to reanimation, singing to you.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I never really thought about that.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I didn't either until just the second Chuck Well, he sold.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
About one hundred million dollars worth of these things. It
was popular for about a year, which is all you
need really, and they don't even advertise their products, so
this was all word of mouth, like somebody would see
it in someone's house, and you know, in the bathroom.
They would go to use a bathroom and this bass
would start singing to them, and before you know it,
they're buying four of them to give to their friends
(23:57):
and so on and so on. And they don't realized
when they buy it. Though, as you know, that motion
sensor worked pretty well, and so you got sick of
it pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I think, yeah, for sure, in America as a whole
got sick of it pretty quickly. So, like you said,
a year is pretty much all you need and we
moved on. But not before like it appeared in all
sorts of different TV shows, and like it was parodied too,
and I think it played a role in an episode
of Murder. She wrote. Nope, it was on Sopranos, though
(24:28):
there was a like a at least one episode where
it showed up and it was kind of like a mcguffin.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Maybe, Oh God, can we move on to the be Dazzler. Yes,
this was a big deal. This was a came from
a guy named Herman Brickman who was a protege of
ron Papel, and he invented it in the late seventies
and it was called the stud Setter, the Ronco rhinestone
at first, and you know, it was like kids used
it some of the eighties, But in the nineties it
(24:54):
became a really big deal because people like Paris Hilton
and Britney Spear. It became like a fashion thing because
people would be dazzle. Like there's a lot of denim,
like denim jackets and jeans and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Just to kind of get across what you're doing here.
This is pretty involved. But you take say a pair
of jeans, maybe around the pocket, and you slide that
bit of fabric in between the backstop, the bottom of
the thing, the base of the thing, and the plunger,
and under the plunger you put a setter and the rhyinestone.
You plunge it down and all of a sudden, you've
(25:31):
just bedazzled your genes. Well you yeah, you've put one
bedazzle onto your jeans and you have a lot of
work ahead of you.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah. I think you need to put at least five
things for it to truly bedazzle.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
That seems like the minimum.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it looks kind of like a
stapler and Mental Floss. You've got some stuff from Mental
Floss on this one. And apparently Ron Pappeel at one point,
as a selling point, said it can make an eight
dollars pair of jeans worth up to fifty dollars.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
The thing that kills me from that is worse up
to fifty.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Dollars, Like, are you gonna get sell them or something?
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, I guess so, I think that's what he was suggesting.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I think people did that actually.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah. So it's identified as a Y two K fashion
trend that came from millennium optimism. I don't remember optimism
of the millennium to you, I remember like fear in dread.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Hmm uh, I don't remember. I remember the fear in
dread about the Y two K bug. But maybe after
that there was optimism because we were now like living
in the future or something. I don't know, I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Maybe maybe I'll.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Pretty out of it at the time for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
But well, I'm talking more about like the whole X
Files zeitgeist. You know, it was a lot really paranoid
and just kind of dark. I don't know. I always
think of it as like a people were just kind
of worried on a really unconscious level about what was
going to happen. That's just you buddy, Yeah, maybe it was.
So it's made a comeback chuck. If you go on
(27:04):
to TikTok or Instagram and you say bedazzle in the
little search bar, I'll bring up like little videos of
people bedazzling stuff. They don't use the bedazzler machine anymore
because you can. I think people still bedazzle clothes here there,
but this is more like the current trend is more
about like bedazzling objects instead.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, I've definitely seen bedazzleed cell phone cases and stuff
like that. Uh, and I know that. I guess you've
seen vasoline jarsdests where you see these.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I saw it on man, I can't remember where I
saw it, but somebody took a little mini vasoline brand
vasiline petroleum jelly jar just redid the whole thing in
different colored rhinestones and it looks like a it's a
bedazzled vasiline jar. It's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you need, if you
need to grease yourself up, you might as well have
on doing it.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And so the thing is, though, it is like, since
you can't use the bedazzling machine, you're just kind of
like kind of tediously like applying one after the other
with an adhesive. It's not the whole satisfying plunge of
applying them. So it's a little more of a craft
these days, like a kind of a meditative, tedious craft,
(28:21):
as opposed to like the whole rock and roll ethos
of the original Bedazzler that was in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, it's like the origami of you know, blingy crafts.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
All right, Chuck, we're down to our last two, if
you can believe it or not. I think we're gonna
end up doing eight total, because remember we're not including
the form and grill. That's not silly, and it was
the intro. Everybody, don't get confused here.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, well, I guess we need to take the break then.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Oh boy, thank you for thinking of that, because Jerry
would have killed us.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
All right, we'll be back right after this with Oh boy,
I'm not even gonna say, you just gotta wait and see.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Okay, Chuck, we're back, and you wouldn't say what was
coming up next. You left it to me, So I'll
just tell everybody we're about to go dive into the
flow bee.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, what episode did we talk about the flow bee? On?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Doesn't ring? A bell.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
We've talked about it at some point, because I remember
mentioning that we almost bought one in our college house late,
you know, kind of late night one night, like you do.
You're up late doing god knows what, and you see
the infomercial come on, and you're all like, we should
get one of those and cut each other's hair. But then,
true college passion, no one ever follows up on that
(30:02):
and does it.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yep. That's because no one had a credit card that
they were willing to bust out.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, that's true. I had that college MX.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
That's uh. Yeah, I had college Capital one. Huh that
that's uh. That's how it works. Though, like those late
night commercials, essentially, I would guess probably fifty sixty percent
of sales of all these products come from people ordering
them while they're drunk. Yeah, probably, So it's got to
be like that explains quite a bit of it. So
(30:31):
the flow bee this is like a humble, legitimate invention. Oh,
by the way, we must have talked about it in
our how Vacuum Attachments Work episode? Yeah that was but
this guy, this was invented by a guy named Rick Haunts,
who I saw the original infomercial for this, and he
said that he was dissatisfied with the haircuts he was
(30:52):
getting and that they grew out too fast, and wouldn't
it be great if he could keep up with it himself.
And he wasn't in the salon hairstyle industry, he wasn't
in the vacuum industry. He was a carpenter who owned
a cabinatry company out in California. So he was a
California cabinet carpenter. That would have been better if all
(31:14):
of it had rolled off the ton. And his name
was Rick Hunts. I don't know if I said that
or not.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Yeah, just a humble carpenter, much like Jesus and Harrison Ford.
So he gives up. He believes in this thing so
much he gives up his carpentry business. He sells it,
in fact, to help fund it. Went around to county
fairs demonstrating this thing. He called it the vacuum cut
at first, but eventually renamed it the flow bee because
it makes like a buzzing sound, like a bee. And
(31:40):
he colored it thustly. It was like a yellow and
black and it's you know, if you don't know what
this thing is, it attaches to a vacuum cleaner, and
so you got to have one of those, of course,
and it engages the vacuum and pulls your hair into
a you know, they have these like recessed hair trimmers
blades in there, and they had different attachments to cut
(32:02):
it at different links. So it just sucking your hair.
So you know, I saw a guy went on YouTube
today to see it demonstrated in modern times, and I
guess this is during COVID because the guy was like, Hey,
these are great things to have around right now during COVID. Yeah,
and yeah, you just sort of suck some up and
then push it back down and pull it out and
push it down all over your hair evenly, and it
(32:24):
supposedly does a decent job of cutting your hair.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, So you know when you go to you know,
Great Clips or Van Michael or something like that, the
hairstylist will put their fingers through your hair and pull
up and put tension on your hair to make it
easier to cut. That's what the vacuum suction does to
your hair. So that means that you don't need to
have somebody with extra hands to cut your hair. Technically,
(32:50):
you can do yourself. This thing you just run over
your head. And that was always essentially the big selling
point for the flow be is well two of them.
One you can cut your hair anytime you want. Well
three two you're gonna save a ton of money. The
flow he's gonna pay for itself in a couple of months,
depending outside of your family. And then three no clippings
(33:13):
to pick up because it all gets sucked right into
your shop back.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
No muss, no fuss. Uh. The problem for me is
I love getting a haircut.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Oh me too. I get to go hang out with
my buddy Michael, who does my hair.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
I get to hang out with my friend Robin, and uh,
it's always good. It's fun, it's a it's it's sort
of like I don't do spa treatments much, so this
is sort of like a spa treatment for me. Get
my hair washed by somebody. It's the best.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, it is nice. Do you get a hot towel
and like a little lavender essential oil?
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Uh no, she doesn't do like it's not like one
of those men's barbershops where they offer you a whiskey
and no, no in the hotael treatment. But she does
a great job.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah, No, neither's mine. It's a salon for sure. Uh so,
uh let's see. Oh so I wanted to say also,
one of the reasons the flow gets to me is
Rick Kant's like he was kind of the person I
was referencing at the beginning, where like he really I
think you might have said he sold his cabinetry business
(34:12):
to fund this, and he started pounding the pavement. He's like,
I've got a great idea here and I've got to
just get it out there. He went to Nialko, he
went to con Air, he went to Remington. I saw
there was a great article on mental floss that really
kind of covered the flowbee. But he was getting nowhere.
He went to salons, and salons are like, no, we
(34:34):
don't want to sell this. It's going to cut into
our business. So he did what most great silly inventors
have done. He took it directly to the consumer. He
created a direct response infomercial. He ponied up thirty thousand
dollars of his own money to produce a thirty minute
infomercial and it first aired in nineteen eighty eight, and
(34:56):
the premise of it is it's a fake show. The
show is new products and ideas which doesn't exist. It
was just for the show and it was hosted by
Lenny mcgil no one knows who that is, had a
synth soundtrack, and the guests just happened to be Rick
Hunts and like, he just demonstrates the flowbe and you
could get it directly through that infomercial and it just
(35:18):
started to take off from there.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, a thirty minute infomercial for something that takes ninety
seconds to describe is and demonstrate too. Probably we haven't
seen patting like that since probably this episode of ours.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
That was that was a low blow, but pretty hilarious.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
They sold between seventy dollars and one hundred and fifty
dollars a piece. He sold about two million of them,
so they sold a ton of these. And if you
go on YouTube to you know, and type in flow
B if you want to see a demonstration, one of
the top things that'll come up is George Clooney because
he's been on I saw him on Kimmel, I know,
(35:59):
he's been on CBS Sunday Morning. Apparently has been non
ironically using the FLOWB for decades on himself is what
he says.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
At least, Yeah, he said listen, man, it works, yeah,
he was. Yeah, non ironically is a great way to
put it. So that's it for the Flowbe hats off
ra Kunts for sticking to your your dreams, your vision.
I think recunts demonstrates a lesson for all of us.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Agreed.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
And then last up, Chuck, we have one that's a
little dear to my heart. The Snuggie. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
I never had a snuggy. The snuggie is a blanket
with sleeves, full stop.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, you can wear it. Essentially, it's a blanket you
can wear. It's opening in the back like a hospital gown. Basically,
I don't remember what.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Like.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I think the current snuggies are made of fleece, but
the original ones were definitely not fleece. They were like
the most chemically chemical fabrics you can possibly imagine, oh man,
and you would get them at like drug stores, that
kind of thing. But they originally started as a direct
response TV campaign and they made a splash, like almost
(37:16):
out of the gate. They were just this talked about item.
In two thousand and eight and nine twenty ten, I
saw there was a blogger who I could not find
the name of. If this was you write in and
let us know because it was great. They said that
the people in the Snuggie commercial who are just doing
like everyday stuff but wearing this blanket, he said, they
(37:36):
all looked like members of a laid back satanic cult.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
That's amazing. It's pretty good. That's a cult I wouldn't
mind being in. Actually, the only cult that appeals to.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Me, this snuggy cult.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, they sold a ton of them, though, like all
of these, that seems to be a recurring theme. They
sold twenty five million Snuggies, so not twenty five million dollars.
That's about five hundred million bucks. And they did that
generally between two thousand and eight and topped out at
that number by twenty thirteen. So it wasn't it wasn't
a one year wonder. It was a you know, I
(38:08):
had a little bit of staying power.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
It did. And Snuggie wasn't the first one. Apparently, the
very first blanket with sleeves was called the slanket, which
was invented by a freshman at University of Maine and
I think nineteen ninety eight. It's name was a course
and that made its a splash, I guess on QVC
and I think it enjoyed like a resurgence during the
(38:32):
Snuggy era. But even before the Snuggie and after the Slanket,
there was the Freedom Blanket, the Book Blanket, the Cuddle Rap,
the Toasty Rap. The difference was Snuggie went all in
on their direct response TV campaign and they I think
the cute name really helped too.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, for sure. And you never know when you're you know,
something is just going to hit the zeitgeist. It just
in just the right way, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, And I said it had a place in my heart.
The Snuggie did that. It's because for Halloween two thousand
and nine, which is the best Halloween I've had as
an adult in my life. You me went as a
Snuggie and it was a lot of fun. We walked
around New York and then went to a friend's party,
our friend Adam's party, and just had a great night.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
So I think that said Chuck, forty minutes of high
quality stuff. You should know podcasting has just been completed.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, forty two and a half minutes. If you want
to get technical.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh god, I guess I started after you. Oh now
it says forty one fifteen.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Now, Oh my god, I hope this is a big
edit job for Jerry.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Well, since Chuck worried about the edit job for Jerry,
I think that means it's listener mail time, don't.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
You That's right? Instead of listener mail, though, we're gonna
do an Instagram comment, okay, because I couldn't find a
get into listener mail. But I went to our Instagram page,
which is I think that's HYSK podcast, correct is the
name of it. And you know we're going to start
doing some more fun stuff over there by the way,
if you want to give it a follow. But this
(40:09):
is from a J gree six a J g r
e E six okay, and this was following up on
the Kentucky Meat Shower short stuff episode.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Oh good good.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I haven't listened yet because I'm on vacation, but I'm
sure you mentioned it's coming up on the Meat Showers anniversary. Guys,
and Bathco was supposedly re enacting this event crying laughing emoji.
This could be a fun way to do listener mail
moving forward. Actually, I always geek out when you two
talk about Kentucky. I've gone to your past four Seattle shows.
(40:41):
My one question, if I had the chance, was always
going to be do you love Kentucky or are we
just really weird? And we're talking about a bit of both,
I'm sure and AJ gree six now remembering we've done
a few Kentucky based episodes now that I think about it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah, remember the Beverly Hills supper Club fire in northern Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, and the Blue People, right.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Were they out of Kentucky? You're right, You're right. Kentucky
wasn't great memory, sure, and how jack Hammer's worked that
was Kentucky heavy.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Oh, we probably we had to mention Kentucky in our
Thoroughbreds episode.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Definitely. Man, we really have to done a lot of Kentucky. Sorry, Iowa,
we need to do a show in Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
I've always on it. Just Lexington or Louisville is the
big question, so let us know.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Okay, there you go. Well who was that again?
Speaker 1 (41:36):
R J gree six, Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Thanks a lot our J gree six or something like that.
We appreciate you hanging out on our Instagram page. We
have that Instagram page. I think we have a Facebook
page too. We're on X Blue Sky TikTok we're even
on TikTok Chuck. Is't that nuts?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
I did not even know that.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
I'm pretty sure we are. A shout out by the
way to Spencer, our social media friend who helps us
big time with that stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Yeah, I mean we'll shout those guys out. If you're
looking to hire someone to do your paid professional social media,
you can do a lot worse than hot Dog Sandwich.
Those guys are great.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
They are great, and they're fun to work with and
they just know what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, super cool dudes.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
So yeah, keep an eye out on our social media
stuff for I guess some more things from us than
you're probably used to, and then you can also, as always,
contact us via email at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio, and.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chalk and
Jerry's here too, and it's time to buckle down and
get serious about some silly inventions that turned out to
be pretty popular.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, man, this takes me right back.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
It does, because this is a super kind of eighties.
But I really associate most of this with the nineties,
don't you.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Oh, I just mean this episode takes me back to
like twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh gotcha? But yeah, sure, yeah, Well, this article is
clearly written around two thousand and nine or twenty ten
by our esteemed colleague Jonathan Strickland esteemed. Oh yeah, there's
loads of esteem going his way from us. We're talking
today about some silly inventions. Typically they were what you
(01:00):
would call direct response TV marketed types of inventions or products, right,
which are what those like the little thing, at least
in the United States, that little red icon that says
as seen on TV mm hmm. Those are basically across
the board direct response TV marketed.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Products, that's right. And by direct response that basically means
we want to make more money, and we'll do that
by making like an infomercial, and instead of the infomercial
saying like and now go to your store and buy
this thing, even though a lot of the stuff you
could find in drug stores and like maybe a bed,
bathroom beyond or something like that. Sure, but generally what
(01:41):
they were trying to do was sell direct to you
get a direct response by putting like an eight hundred
number up you could call an order. So that just
means they get more juice for themselves since they're not
having to sell it to a store.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, and often it's like, yes, of course they wanted
more profit, but they also wanted to be able to
pay off the third mortgage they took out on their
house to get this invention of theirs out.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, maybe public.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
You know, there's a lot of these that were just
invented by some person. You know, it's a good idea,
and luckily for them, they took off and became super popular.
So there's one that it wouldn't qualify in any really way,
shape or form as a silly invention, so we didn't
include it on this list. But it is the most
(02:25):
the greatest selling direct response TV marketed product of all time,
far and away, and it's the George Foreman grill. From
what I saw in the last like twenty plus years,
more like thirty years, I think it sold about a
billion dollars worth of product. That is pretty significant. I
(02:49):
don't know if you're counting, but a billion dollars still
means a lot these days.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
It does. I never had a Forman grill. I never
owned one, but I lived with one for a year.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Oh yeah. Did it pay a share of the rent?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah? No, I think one of my roommates had one year,
I feel like in college. And you know, if you
don't know what those words, the whole trick is. It's
like any kind of standard Panini press or something, except
they raised up one side of it so Greece could
trickle out of it. And that was about the only difference,
I think, right.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, But the thing is it really works. You mean,
and I have one and we use it basically anytime
we cook burgers, we use it. And I mean, like
there's no loss of taste, but there's a ton of
like fat that's just just strips right out. So we
use ours pretty frequently.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
That's funny. I don't think I knew that you guys
had a Foreman.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
We do. And one other thing about this too. This
is another thing too with direct response products. Most people
think George Foreman invented that grill because he refers to
it in the ads as his grill. He did not.
It was already an existing product and he was approached
to basically be the pitch man for it, and very
wisely he said, sure, I'll do it, but you have
(04:03):
to give me forty five percent of the profits.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah. He made a lot of money on miss things.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Just crazy gobs of money. Good for him, And there's
a similar So moving into our list now, Chuck, and
this is in very much stuff you should know tradition.
Not a top ten, a not a full ten top
ten list, I guess is what we call this kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah. I don't know that we've ever done ten, and
we're never gonna.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
We better not. If we did. At some point we
need to find that episode and go edit out one
of them.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yeah, or maybe that's like our very last episode will
be a true ten.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Oh yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
That'll be the tell everyone will know we could.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Do a top ten of our top ten episodes.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, that sounds it sounds like a great way to finish.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Actually, so the segue I guess from George Foreman to
the first on our list is the idea that people
tended to think Suzanne Summers may have invented the thigh Master.
She did not. Just like George Foreman, she was approached
to become the pitch person for an existing invention, and
(05:15):
she thanked her lucky stars all the way to the
bank later on that she agreed to it.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
That's right. If you have a certain age, you may
not even know who Susanne Summers is, or you may
know her as the thigh Master lady. If you're a
little bit older, if you're in our generation and above,
you know her as Chrissy from the great She's Raids
the Sheriff Sitcom threes Company.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Oh Three's Company.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, yeah, great show.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
She was also and she She's the Sheriff. Though, that
was a good one.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I didn't I've never even heard of that show.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
It was the kind of show that would come on
at three point thirty pm Saturday, right after reruns of
Mama's Family.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, I've really never heard of She's the shaff I
take it to the Sheriff.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
She was the sheriff. Okay, it was a good show.
But yes, of course Three's Company Chrissy is who she
is vastly far and away better known for. But by
that I mean that was like the late seventies, early
eighties when she left Three's Company. Apparently she was making
one hundred and twenty grand less an episode than Jack
John Ritter, so she's like, I'm out of here, and
(06:22):
there was kind of a lull in her career between
then and I guess nineteen ninety one when she came
back with a vengeance on TV pitching this thigh master.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Yeah, pitching the v bar. That's what it was originally
called when a Swedish physical therapist named doctor Anne Marie
Binstrom invented this thing in the sixties. But they tweaked
it a little bit. They made it look cooler, they
made it a little more colorful, and brought it into
the eighties slash early nineties and approached her to like
you said, like, hey, you know, you're a very recognizable
(06:57):
face and you're into fitness and you're smart lady. She
played a dingbat on Three's Company, But Suzanne Summers is
a very smart woman. Yeah, as evidenced by the perhaps
three hundred million dollars she made on Howkin the thigh
Master and eventually like buying out the partners to where
she outright owned it.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
That's awesome. So you said that this is an existing device, right,
the V bar? Yes, So what it was we should
just say real quick, the thigh master or the V
bar was this kind of device? What would you liken
it too? You know those like paper chip clips?
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, I'm just ready for you to confuse everybody.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Go ahead, Okay, it's like a giant paper chip clip,
but it doesn't open up, so you couldn't clip it
to anything. It's just the squeezing part. So go to
your kitchen right now, get a paper chip clip, break
off the part that opens up, and then put the
little remaining part that's like a V the V bar
between your legs and squeeze. And what you're doing is
(08:01):
using a mini thigh master right now.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
That's right. You do the same thing with your fingers
if you wanted to.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Right. So, they made it pop and like they hid
the spring in the middle, and they gave it some
great coloring. And this was now the thigh Master that
Suzanne Summers was now demonstrating on some very famous TV
ads again starting in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
That's right, And I guess the only other thing we
should mention is that there was a physician on a
lot of these commercials. There was a guy wearing a
lab coat, doctor Herbert L. Gould, who was there to
recommend the thing and saying that he uses it. And
the cherry on top is that doctor Gould was an ophthalmologist.
Is great, not that that doesn't you know, I mean,
(08:48):
still a doctor still used the thing, I guess for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, it's not illegitimate, it's just funny.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Clearly knew Suzanne Summer somehow, probably.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Or they just started picking doctor at random.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Now I think he was probably her optomologist, be my guess.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, you're probably right. I feel like there is one
more thing we should mention about the ad, and that
is the fact that Suzanne Summers appeared in it wearing
leotard like you would think for working out, but also
panteos and high heels, which is the specific kind of.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Look yeah, oh, actually, there is one more thing, because
this is we buried the lead. The probably the most
interesting thing about all of this is that there is
a direct response Hall of Fame and she's in it.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Yep. She was inducted in twenty fourteen and rightly so amazing.
Take an early break or move on? No, we got
to move on, Okay, so I say we move on
to the pocket Fishermen and a little bit of a
bio on rom Po Peel, one of the great salesmen
of all time.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Oh yeah, Ron papill. If you had a TV in
the nineteen eighties and nineties and you have seen this, dude,
he was the guy that you know. But wait, there's
more that came from him. He originated that term. He
was popular in the I guess even the like the
fifties and early sixties when he made the first infomercial
(10:15):
for the vegematic. Yeah it's vices, it dices like that
was Ron Papeel. All these sort of tropes of infomercials,
a lot of them come from the great Ron Papel.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Yeah, that vegematic infomercial that was like the world's first one.
So yes, he was an infomercial god. And he got
his start. He was always good at selling things. Apparently,
by the time he was sixteen, he was selling his
dad's inventions at flea markets and grossing about five hundred
bucks a day, and that's in nineteen fifty one dollars,
so that's like ten million dollars a day today. And
(10:49):
within just a few years he was a household name
thanks to television. And it was largely built on that
vegematic that apparently his dad invented.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, it was you know, it's a veggie chopper.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah, manual food processor, that's it. But because he was
he could get so excited about any wacky, weird invention
and try to make you excited about it, and there
was just no ignoring this guy.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Yeah, he had the enshll egg scrambler, and that was
a device where if you didn't want to crack your
egg put it in a bowl and scramble it, you
could use this little device that had a little bent
pin that went inside the eggshell and spun around. Very
interesting invention. And the GLH which stood for Great Looking Hair,
(11:39):
the g LH Formula number nine hair system, which is
basically spray paint for bald spots.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, it was like aerosol spray hair like product or
something like that.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Remember when Rudy Giuliani sweated his sweated that stuff down
the side of his face.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, I do.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
It's amazing. It was like, what a time when he
was on TV in front of like sweating what looked
like shoe polish, and then standing in.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Front of that huh for landscape.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Oh my god, what a time to be alive. Amazing.
It was like SNL come to life.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
It really moment after moment too, something new.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
That Inside the Eggshell Scrambler too. By the way. So
one of the other things about all these products are
their ads are magnificent. Sometimes they're magnificently terrible or just
so absurd or just unintentionally salacious. But this Inside the
Eggshell Scrambler ad had a little kid sitting at a
(12:44):
table and he had been served like runny eggs, and
it's the TV announcer says, no more runny eggs, and
the kid looks at his plate and kind of gags
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Good lord, I love runny eggs.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Well this didn't, and apparently neither did Ron Pop Peel
because he used it as a selling point.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Well, his company, because he was Ron, was called Ronco.
They've done a couple of billion in sales over the year,
and part of that chunk is owed to the pocket
Fisherman which is the one on the list here, and
that's you can still get a pocket fisherman. It is
a is exactly what it sounds like. It's a compact
fishing rod that folds up very small. It has a
(13:26):
little compartment in the handle to hold some stuff, and
it's you know the problem with the pocket fishermen like
it works. If you go on YouTube, there are plenty
of examples of people using this thing and catching like
a decent sized fish. Even it's just not I think
you had in here. Maybe it was strickling. It said,
it solves the problem that we didn't know existed, And
(13:48):
that's kind of true, because you know, if you're going camping,
let's say, or backpacking, and you pack up and break
down a regular sized fishing rod, it straps on the
outside of your backpack, no problem, and it's not really
that big or in the way. So the pocket fisherman
just took it a little further, I.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
Guess, yeah, and made it chunkier.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah. They're cool looking.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Yeah, they look vaguely like a staple gun. Oh okay,
that you break off the handle from and put between
your legs and squeeze staples into your the insides of
your thighs. That's what its like.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I think we should definitely take that break now, Okay,
all right, we'll be right back with a few more
right after this. All right, we're back, everybody. And next
(14:56):
on the list, we have the shake weight, which is
a you know, a semi legitimate piece of workout equipment.
It's kind of like a dumbell if you picture a dumbell,
but instead of just lifting the dumbbell, you put both
hands on it and move it. And there's a spring
in the middle and the two ends of the dumbbell
like move like when you shake it. A shake weight,
(15:17):
that's what it is. But it became popular not because
of it's how well it worked or how good of
a piece of gear it was. It became popular because
of the clearly obvious sexual innuendo that comes about while operating.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, we don't really need to explain it. Just go
look at a shakewaight, ad, and you'll immediately understand what
we're talking about. Yeah. The thing is, though, Chuck, is
it does seem to have worked right, Like you're basically
instead of you moving, the weight is moving, and what
you're trying to do is stabilize it and what the
(15:56):
shake weight makers were saying is like, hey man, this
requires way more muscle exertion than traditional dumbbell lifting. And
they commissioned some studies that basically said, yeah, this actually
is is correct. Use something more like three hundred percent
more muscle activity than you do with traditional dumbbells, and
(16:16):
in like one sixth of the time too. And plus
I think they had a two and a half pound
version that was for women apparently, and then one that
was double the weight for men. And the two and
a half pound version burned as many calories as a
twelve pound dumbbell. So all of this checked out. But
(16:37):
again that's not really what people were buying the shake
weight for.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
No, it was parodied sort of all over the place,
obviously on stuff like SNL Ellen DeGeneres, and you know,
it's just one of those funny things that hit like
virally early on because of how it looked when you
used it. You know, I imagine it was a pretty
decent cardio workout. I don't think I've ever seen one
in person. Are touched one?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I don't believe I have either.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I lived with one for a while.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Did you know it was? It was a mean drunk.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah, I wonder if these things had if they were
like in actual gems.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
I don't know, Like this is one of the things
like when it comes to exercise equipment, like the thigh
Master two. The Shakewaight was like there was article after
article like it doesn't really work, it actually works, And
from what I saw, the consensus seemed to be that
it definitely did give you a workout, like you could
feel it, but it for as far as strength training,
(17:40):
which is what most people use dumbbells for, it wasn't
going to help you very much for that.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Yeah, probably pretty good cardio though, like I said, and
I imagine it was a pretty decent four arm workout, you.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Know, right exactly. But yes, I'm sure most people wouldn't
have been caught dead at the gym using one of
those things. All right, Well that was the Shakeway. Oh
one other thing I saw that in one year, I
think this was two thousand and ten, they made something
like forty million dollars off of it.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Man, these things it's crazy.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, it is pretty impressive. So what's up next, Charles?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Well, we got to go with big mouth. I couldn't
even say it, right, almost, said Billy big mouth. But
that's just what I called mine. Big mouth. Billy Bass
took the world by storm in the early two thousands.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, it
is if you've ever seen a taxidermied fish mounted on
a plaque on the wall like a big largemouth bass,
(18:40):
imagine if that thing came to life and saying don't worry,
be happy to you.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Yeah, this thing had a real evil dead vibe to it.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, I think so. Take Me to the River was
the other one of the two original or not original songs,
but you know what I mean, the first songs that
the Billy Bass played, right.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
And this is in two thousand, when Billy Bass Spentett's
year in the limelight. But the story goes back a
couple of years earlier and the inventor, Joe Peltieri, and
his wife Barbara, were out on a road trip. Joe
was looking for the next big idea. He was a
VP at a novelty company and he was trying to
figure out, you know, what to do. I think he
(19:21):
had kind of hit a dry patch and was a
little concerned. And they ended up at a bass pro
shop on the road trip and his wife, Barbara, knowing
that he was trying to come up with a new idea,
said why not a mounted fish that sings? And Joe said, Barbara,
I could kiss you and she says, well, what are
you waiting for? And they kissed.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
I wonder how that went down. Was she literally walking
around a bass pro shop and saw a taxa dermat
fish and said, wouldn't it be great if that thing
sang don't worry to be happy?
Speaker 2 (19:52):
That's that's how I envision it.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Just what a while? I mean, was she on Paoti?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
I don't know. Yeah, maybe she didn't even think of it.
She saw it, you know.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, it's such a weird thing to conjure up, but
I love it and it was a very very fun product,
Like out of all these, to me, this is the
most kind of fun thing that you might want to
have on your wall.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, and I think it's great. They went with don't
worry be happy to take me to the river. You
understand that's pretty funny, but don't worry be happy. That
was like the smash It of nineteen eighty eight, Like
it had been dead and gone for over a decade,
and they brought that thing back with big mouth billy bass.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Yes, hard to get that out in it.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, it is. So.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The thing was actually, for what it was was a
fairly sophisticated piece of gear. They had a censor inside
of it so when you walk by it, it would
pick up on that and just automatically start singing. And
he had some designs that he did over the years
that he didn't love, but he really hit on it
when I guess his wife Barbara probably said well, why
(20:54):
don't you have the thing turn its head out and
sort of look at the person they're serenading, And he
was like, by god, Barbara, we've got a kiss.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Again, right, And that was a big deal like that,
Like you did not see things that did that, that
turned away from the plaque and looked at you to sing.
That put the novel in novelty for big mouth billy bass,
if you ask me.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah. So, like I was saying, though, it was a
pretty sophisticated thing the way it all worked. And for
twenty nine ninety five, you know, they took a long
time to build. It wasn't cheap. It was a well
made piece of gear. It was forty days to build one.
So I think Jimmy G. E. M. M. Y was
the company that which still owns the big Mouth Billy
(21:37):
Bass that he was working for. But they didn't know
it was going to be such a big deal. So
and like I said, because it took so long to make,
they ended up shorthanded. And these things were going on
eBay for like three times the amount.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah, and I mean twenty nine ninety five in two
thousand was about fifty seven dollars today for a latex
singing fish essentially. But it just it hit just right
and it became like basically the big thing in two
thousand in the United States, and in very short order,
competitors came out and knockoffs came out, and then they
(22:12):
showed up with different songs too. I Will Survive, Stay
in Alive YMCA.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Of course this was.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
During a disco revival, if you'll remember correctly. And I
found I didn't send this to you, I don't think.
But the Royal Palm shuffle Board Club, the Chicago location
along one wall, they have more than seventy big mouth Billy.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Bass Wow Nightmare Fuel that.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
They have choreographed, not even to do to sing in
unison like one will sing the main part and the
others will turn and like sing the chorus and stuff
like that, but they sing Staying Alive. They sing talking
Heads once in a lifetime, and then they sing Choices
by E forty. So it's really something to see if
(22:57):
you go look up the video.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Wow, I gotta check that out. That took some pretty
brilliant wiring, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I can't. I think it is just timing. I don't
know how they did it, but it's really impressive. But yeah,
it is a little haunting for sure, because they have
dead eyes. I never really thought about it before. But
that's the thing. One of the things that makes it
so absurd is the fish looks dead still, you know
what I mean. They didn't try to make it look alive.
(23:25):
It looks like a dead mounted fish come to life
or come to reanimation, singing to you.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
I never really thought about that.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I didn't either until just the second Chuck Well, he sold.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
About one hundred million dollars worth of these things. It
was popular for about a year, which is all you
need really, and they don't even advertise their products, so
this was all word of mouth, like somebody would see
it in someone's house, and you know, in the bathroom.
They would go to use a bathroom and this bass
would start singing to them, and before you know it,
they're buying four of them to give to their friends
(23:57):
and so on and so on. And they don't realized
when they buy it. Though, as you know, that motion
sensor worked pretty well, and so you got sick of
it pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I think, yeah, for sure, in America as a whole
got sick of it pretty quickly. So, like you said,
a year is pretty much all you need and we
moved on. But not before like it appeared in all
sorts of different TV shows, and like it was parodied too,
and I think it played a role in an episode
of Murder. She wrote. Nope, it was on Sopranos, though
(24:28):
there was a like a at least one episode where
it showed up and it was kind of like a mcguffin.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Maybe, Oh God, can we move on to the be Dazzler. Yes,
this was a big deal. This was a came from
a guy named Herman Brickman who was a protege of
ron Papel, and he invented it in the late seventies
and it was called the stud Setter, the Ronco rhinestone
at first, and you know, it was like kids used
it some of the eighties, But in the nineties it
(24:54):
became a really big deal because people like Paris Hilton
and Britney Spear. It became like a fashion thing because
people would be dazzle. Like there's a lot of denim,
like denim jackets and jeans and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Just to kind of get across what you're doing here.
This is pretty involved. But you take say a pair
of jeans, maybe around the pocket, and you slide that
bit of fabric in between the backstop, the bottom of
the thing, the base of the thing, and the plunger,
and under the plunger you put a setter and the rhyinestone.
You plunge it down and all of a sudden, you've
(25:31):
just bedazzled your genes. Well you yeah, you've put one
bedazzle onto your jeans and you have a lot of
work ahead of you.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah. I think you need to put at least five
things for it to truly bedazzle.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
That seems like the minimum.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it looks kind of like a
stapler and Mental Floss. You've got some stuff from Mental
Floss on this one. And apparently Ron Pappeel at one point,
as a selling point, said it can make an eight
dollars pair of jeans worth up to fifty dollars.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
The thing that kills me from that is worse up
to fifty.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Dollars, Like, are you gonna get sell them or something?
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, I guess so, I think that's what he was suggesting.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
I think people did that actually.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Yeah. So it's identified as a Y two K fashion
trend that came from millennium optimism. I don't remember optimism
of the millennium to you, I remember like fear in dread.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Hmm uh, I don't remember. I remember the fear in
dread about the Y two K bug. But maybe after
that there was optimism because we were now like living
in the future or something. I don't know, I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Maybe maybe I'll.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Pretty out of it at the time for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
But well, I'm talking more about like the whole X
Files zeitgeist. You know, it was a lot really paranoid
and just kind of dark. I don't know. I always
think of it as like a people were just kind
of worried on a really unconscious level about what was
going to happen. That's just you buddy, Yeah, maybe it was.
So it's made a comeback chuck. If you go on
(27:04):
to TikTok or Instagram and you say bedazzle in the
little search bar, I'll bring up like little videos of
people bedazzling stuff. They don't use the bedazzler machine anymore
because you can. I think people still bedazzle clothes here there,
but this is more like the current trend is more
about like bedazzling objects instead.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, I've definitely seen bedazzleed cell phone cases and stuff
like that. Uh, and I know that. I guess you've
seen vasoline jarsdests where you see these.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I saw it on man, I can't remember where I
saw it, but somebody took a little mini vasoline brand
vasiline petroleum jelly jar just redid the whole thing in
different colored rhinestones and it looks like a it's a
bedazzled vasiline jar. It's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you need, if you
need to grease yourself up, you might as well have
on doing it.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And so the thing is, though, it is like, since
you can't use the bedazzling machine, you're just kind of
like kind of tediously like applying one after the other
with an adhesive. It's not the whole satisfying plunge of
applying them. So it's a little more of a craft
these days, like a kind of a meditative, tedious craft,
(28:21):
as opposed to like the whole rock and roll ethos
of the original Bedazzler that was in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, it's like the origami of you know, blingy crafts.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
All right, Chuck, we're down to our last two, if
you can believe it or not. I think we're gonna
end up doing eight total, because remember we're not including
the form and grill. That's not silly, and it was
the intro. Everybody, don't get confused here.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, well, I guess we need to take the break then.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Oh boy, thank you for thinking of that, because Jerry
would have killed us.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
All right, we'll be back right after this with Oh boy,
I'm not even gonna say, you just gotta wait and see.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Okay, Chuck, we're back, and you wouldn't say what was
coming up next. You left it to me, So I'll
just tell everybody we're about to go dive into the
flow bee.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, what episode did we talk about the flow bee? On?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Doesn't ring? A bell.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
We've talked about it at some point, because I remember
mentioning that we almost bought one in our college house late,
you know, kind of late night one night, like you do.
You're up late doing god knows what, and you see
the infomercial come on, and you're all like, we should
get one of those and cut each other's hair. But then,
true college passion, no one ever follows up on that
(30:02):
and does it.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yep. That's because no one had a credit card that
they were willing to bust out.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, that's true. I had that college MX.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
That's uh. Yeah, I had college Capital one. Huh that
that's uh. That's how it works. Though, like those late
night commercials, essentially, I would guess probably fifty sixty percent
of sales of all these products come from people ordering
them while they're drunk. Yeah, probably, So it's got to
be like that explains quite a bit of it. So
(30:31):
the flow bee this is like a humble, legitimate invention. Oh,
by the way, we must have talked about it in
our how Vacuum Attachments Work episode? Yeah that was but
this guy, this was invented by a guy named Rick Haunts,
who I saw the original infomercial for this, and he
said that he was dissatisfied with the haircuts he was
(30:52):
getting and that they grew out too fast, and wouldn't
it be great if he could keep up with it himself.
And he wasn't in the salon hairstyle industry, he wasn't
in the vacuum industry. He was a carpenter who owned
a cabinatry company out in California. So he was a
California cabinet carpenter. That would have been better if all
(31:14):
of it had rolled off the ton. And his name
was Rick Hunts. I don't know if I said that
or not.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Yeah, just a humble carpenter, much like Jesus and Harrison Ford.
So he gives up. He believes in this thing so
much he gives up his carpentry business. He sells it,
in fact, to help fund it. Went around to county
fairs demonstrating this thing. He called it the vacuum cut
at first, but eventually renamed it the flow bee because
it makes like a buzzing sound, like a bee. And
(31:40):
he colored it thustly. It was like a yellow and
black and it's you know, if you don't know what
this thing is, it attaches to a vacuum cleaner, and
so you got to have one of those, of course,
and it engages the vacuum and pulls your hair into
a you know, they have these like recessed hair trimmers
blades in there, and they had different attachments to cut
(32:02):
it at different links. So it just sucking your hair.
So you know, I saw a guy went on YouTube
today to see it demonstrated in modern times, and I
guess this is during COVID because the guy was like, Hey,
these are great things to have around right now during COVID. Yeah,
and yeah, you just sort of suck some up and
then push it back down and pull it out and
push it down all over your hair evenly, and it
(32:24):
supposedly does a decent job of cutting your hair.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah, So you know when you go to you know,
Great Clips or Van Michael or something like that, the
hairstylist will put their fingers through your hair and pull
up and put tension on your hair to make it
easier to cut. That's what the vacuum suction does to
your hair. So that means that you don't need to
have somebody with extra hands to cut your hair. Technically,
(32:50):
you can do yourself. This thing you just run over
your head. And that was always essentially the big selling
point for the flow be is well two of them.
One you can cut your hair anytime you want. Well
three two you're gonna save a ton of money. The
flow he's gonna pay for itself in a couple of months,
depending outside of your family. And then three no clippings
(33:13):
to pick up because it all gets sucked right into
your shop back.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
No muss, no fuss. Uh. The problem for me is
I love getting a haircut.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Oh me too. I get to go hang out with
my buddy Michael, who does my hair.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
I get to hang out with my friend Robin, and uh,
it's always good. It's fun, it's a it's it's sort
of like I don't do spa treatments much, so this
is sort of like a spa treatment for me. Get
my hair washed by somebody. It's the best.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, it is nice. Do you get a hot towel
and like a little lavender essential oil?
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Uh no, she doesn't do like it's not like one
of those men's barbershops where they offer you a whiskey
and no, no in the hotael treatment. But she does
a great job.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah, No, neither's mine. It's a salon for sure. Uh so,
uh let's see. Oh so I wanted to say also,
one of the reasons the flow gets to me is
Rick Kant's like he was kind of the person I
was referencing at the beginning, where like he really I
think you might have said he sold his cabinetry business
(34:12):
to fund this, and he started pounding the pavement. He's like,
I've got a great idea here and I've got to
just get it out there. He went to Nialko, he
went to con Air, he went to Remington. I saw
there was a great article on mental floss that really
kind of covered the flowbee. But he was getting nowhere.
He went to salons, and salons are like, no, we
(34:34):
don't want to sell this. It's going to cut into
our business. So he did what most great silly inventors
have done. He took it directly to the consumer. He
created a direct response infomercial. He ponied up thirty thousand
dollars of his own money to produce a thirty minute
infomercial and it first aired in nineteen eighty eight, and
(34:56):
the premise of it is it's a fake show. The
show is new products and ideas which doesn't exist. It
was just for the show and it was hosted by
Lenny mcgil no one knows who that is, had a
synth soundtrack, and the guests just happened to be Rick
Hunts and like, he just demonstrates the flowbe and you
could get it directly through that infomercial and it just
(35:18):
started to take off from there.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, a thirty minute infomercial for something that takes ninety
seconds to describe is and demonstrate too. Probably we haven't
seen patting like that since probably this episode of ours.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
That was that was a low blow, but pretty hilarious.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
They sold between seventy dollars and one hundred and fifty
dollars a piece. He sold about two million of them,
so they sold a ton of these. And if you
go on YouTube to you know, and type in flow
B if you want to see a demonstration, one of
the top things that'll come up is George Clooney because
he's been on I saw him on Kimmel, I know,
(35:59):
he's been on CBS Sunday Morning. Apparently has been non
ironically using the FLOWB for decades on himself is what
he says.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
At least, Yeah, he said listen, man, it works, yeah,
he was. Yeah, non ironically is a great way to
put it. So that's it for the Flowbe hats off
ra Kunts for sticking to your your dreams, your vision.
I think recunts demonstrates a lesson for all of us.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Agreed.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
And then last up, Chuck, we have one that's a
little dear to my heart. The Snuggie. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
I never had a snuggy. The snuggie is a blanket
with sleeves, full stop.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Yeah, you can wear it. Essentially, it's a blanket you
can wear. It's opening in the back like a hospital gown. Basically,
I don't remember what.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Like.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
I think the current snuggies are made of fleece, but
the original ones were definitely not fleece. They were like
the most chemically chemical fabrics you can possibly imagine, oh man,
and you would get them at like drug stores, that
kind of thing. But they originally started as a direct
response TV campaign and they made a splash, like almost
(37:16):
out of the gate. They were just this talked about item.
In two thousand and eight and nine twenty ten, I
saw there was a blogger who I could not find
the name of. If this was you write in and
let us know because it was great. They said that
the people in the Snuggie commercial who are just doing
like everyday stuff but wearing this blanket, he said, they
(37:36):
all looked like members of a laid back satanic cult.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
That's amazing. It's pretty good. That's a cult I wouldn't
mind being in. Actually, the only cult that appeals to.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Me, this snuggy cult.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Yeah, they sold a ton of them, though, like all
of these, that seems to be a recurring theme. They
sold twenty five million Snuggies, so not twenty five million dollars.
That's about five hundred million bucks. And they did that
generally between two thousand and eight and topped out at
that number by twenty thirteen. So it wasn't it wasn't
a one year wonder. It was a you know, I
(38:08):
had a little bit of staying power.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
It did. And Snuggie wasn't the first one. Apparently, the
very first blanket with sleeves was called the slanket, which
was invented by a freshman at University of Maine and
I think nineteen ninety eight. It's name was a course
and that made its a splash, I guess on QVC
and I think it enjoyed like a resurgence during the
(38:32):
Snuggy era. But even before the Snuggie and after the Slanket,
there was the Freedom Blanket, the Book Blanket, the Cuddle Rap,
the Toasty Rap. The difference was Snuggie went all in
on their direct response TV campaign and they I think
the cute name really helped too.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah, for sure. And you never know when you're you know,
something is just going to hit the zeitgeist. It just
in just the right way, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
Yeah, And I said it had a place in my heart.
The Snuggie did that. It's because for Halloween two thousand
and nine, which is the best Halloween I've had as
an adult in my life. You me went as a
Snuggie and it was a lot of fun. We walked
around New York and then went to a friend's party,
our friend Adam's party, and just had a great night.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
So I think that said Chuck, forty minutes of high
quality stuff. You should know podcasting has just been completed.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yeah, forty two and a half minutes. If you want
to get technical.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh god, I guess I started after you. Oh now
it says forty one fifteen.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Now, Oh my god, I hope this is a big
edit job for Jerry.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Well, since Chuck worried about the edit job for Jerry,
I think that means it's listener mail time, don't.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
You That's right? Instead of listener mail, though, we're gonna
do an Instagram comment, okay, because I couldn't find a
get into listener mail. But I went to our Instagram page,
which is I think that's HYSK podcast, correct is the
name of it. And you know we're going to start
doing some more fun stuff over there by the way,
if you want to give it a follow. But this
(40:09):
is from a J gree six a J g r
e E six okay, and this was following up on
the Kentucky Meat Shower short stuff episode.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Oh good good.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
I haven't listened yet because I'm on vacation, but I'm
sure you mentioned it's coming up on the Meat Showers anniversary. Guys,
and Bathco was supposedly re enacting this event crying laughing emoji.
This could be a fun way to do listener mail
moving forward. Actually, I always geek out when you two
talk about Kentucky. I've gone to your past four Seattle shows.
(40:41):
My one question, if I had the chance, was always
going to be do you love Kentucky or are we
just really weird? And we're talking about a bit of both,
I'm sure and AJ gree six now remembering we've done
a few Kentucky based episodes now that I think about it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah, remember the Beverly Hills supper Club fire in northern Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Yeah, and the Blue People, right.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Were they out of Kentucky? You're right, You're right. Kentucky
wasn't great memory, sure, and how jack Hammer's worked that
was Kentucky heavy.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Oh, we probably we had to mention Kentucky in our
Thoroughbreds episode.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Definitely. Man, we really have to done a lot of Kentucky. Sorry, Iowa,
we need to do a show in Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
I've always on it. Just Lexington or Louisville is the
big question, so let us know.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Okay, there you go. Well who was that again?
Speaker 1 (41:36):
R J gree six, Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Thanks a lot our J gree six or something like that.
We appreciate you hanging out on our Instagram page. We
have that Instagram page. I think we have a Facebook
page too. We're on X Blue Sky TikTok we're even
on TikTok Chuck. Is't that nuts?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
I did not even know that.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
I'm pretty sure we are. A shout out by the
way to Spencer, our social media friend who helps us
big time with that stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Yeah, I mean we'll shout those guys out. If you're
looking to hire someone to do your paid professional social media,
you can do a lot worse than hot Dog Sandwich.
Those guys are great.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
They are great, and they're fun to work with and
they just know what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, super cool dudes.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
So yeah, keep an eye out on our social media
stuff for I guess some more things from us than
you're probably used to, and then you can also, as always,
contact us via email at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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