Ridiculous Infomercial Review Blog

We know that many has-been celebrities end up hosting infomercials. But where do has-been infomercial stars go?

Well, if the current catalog of The Learning Annex San Francisco is any indication, many of them can be found teaching classes there.

If you’re not familiar with The Learning Annex, it is a venerable institution of adult instruction that offers classes on such hallowed subjects as “How to Make a Million Dollars Flipping Houses” and “Better Orgasms Through Tantric Meditation.”

On the cover of the current San Francisco Learning Annex catalog can be found Jay “The Juiceman” Kordich and Susan Powter. You remember Susan Powter. She’s the obnoxious harpy who used to appear on her own diet infomercials urging people to “Stop the Insanity.” Her picture on the Learning Annex catalog cover shows her with two-toned hair flying in all sorts of directions, lots of eye make-up, and a nose-ring. Susan Powter looks more like a porn star than Nina Hartley—the actual porn star who dominates the left side of the cover. (The cover also features some woman named Andrea Adler. I don’t know who she is but she must be honored to be featured in such august company.)

Open the pages of the catalog and you’ll find even more people who include “infomercial star” on their résumés. There’s our good friend Matthew Lesko teaching a class about—what else—how to get free money from the government. And there’s Howard Berg. In the 1990s the rotund Mr. Howard Berg appeared with Kevin Trudeau in an infomercial that sold his speed reading course. (I used to refer to this infomercial as “The Felon and the Fat Ass.”) Berg’s course was one of the few products I have ever actually purchased from an infomercial. It sucked, by the way.

The Juiceman, Susan Powter, Nina Hartley, Matthew Lesko, Howard Berg—that sounds like a great cast for the next season of The Surreal Life. Are you listening VH1?

Apparently, Microsoft decided that a great way to get people to stop using Google and to start using their MSN search engine was to hire three annoying guys who hawk products on late-night infomercials: Matthew Lesko (Free Money to Change Your Life), Tony Little (Gazelle Freestyle), and Anthony Sullivan (Swivel Sweeper). Two of which, we are proud to say, have had their infomercials featured on the Ridiculous Infomercial Review.

MSN is calling this promotional effort Infomercial Madness and has a Flash website featuring the infomercial pitchmen. The website features videos by all three in which they parody their infomercial personas in an effort to let people know all about the glories of MSN Search. You do have to give credit to Lesko, Little, and Sullivan for being able to laugh at themselves, especially in the “Battle of the Infomercial Superstars” video, which makes all three gentlemen out to be even bigger buffoons than they probably are in real life.

The Infomercial Madness site also includes a “Match Game,” which is like that old memory card game you played as a kid but here the cards feature weird pictures of Lesko, Little, and Sullivan and when you successfully match the cards the characters shout out an obnoxious catch phrase. But probably the best thing on Infomercial Madness is “Make Your Own Infomercial” in which you choose one of the men, select various phrases for him to say, and then watch a video of the result. It’s sort of a Mad Libs for infomercial junkies.

Have you seen the TV show Fashion House? It’s that godawful nighttime soap opera starring Bo Derek. Fashion House, along with Desire, constitutes the programming for the recently launched MyNetworkTV. Apparently, the geniuses at MyNetworkTV (which is owned by Fox) thought that the American public was just dying to have English-language versions of the Spanish telenovellas—I know I’ve been holding my breath for years!

The pilot for Fashion House had infomercial hosting goddess Forbes Riley in the role currently played by Bo Derek (Maria Gianni). Riley has hosted countless infomercials including Jack LaLanne Power Juicer, Abs of Steel, Wagner’s Paint Mate, Aerobed, Covert Bailey, Abtronic Wonder Massage, Orbitrek, Exerflex, Pro-Strong Nail Strengthener, and her masterpiece, Aromatrim.

Here is a clip of Forbes Riley in the Fashion House pilot:

Her best performance since feeding a spoonful of mustard to a blindfolded man!

Actually, I think Forbes gives the role the kind of unsubtle, over-the-top, campy quality that you find on the real Spanish telenovellas, unlike most of the performances on Fashion House, which are just plain dull.

Fitness celebrity Jack LaLanne was one of the first people to have his own exercise show on television. This was during the 1950s when it was considered eccentric for a man in his 30s and 40s to be concerned with fitness and health. Through the decades Jack LaLanne, usually clad in his trademark jumpsuit, maintained his persona as the older man still vigorous and energetic through exercise and healthy living.

Fast forward to early 1990s. Here comes along Jay Kordich, calling himself “The Juiceman”. And the Juiceman pretty much adopts Jack LaLanne’s persona as the vigorous and eccentric older gentleman into fitness. Only this time the persona was used to market juicing machines on infomercials. In some ways Jay Kordich seemed even more LaLanne than Jack. Whereas Jack was energetic, the Juiceman seemed hyperactive. Whereas LaLanne came across as eccentric, Kordich often came across as downright strange.

So how does Jack LaLanne respond? He decides to take The Juiceman’s marketing methods and sell his own brand of juicer and appear in his own infomercials to sell them.

It’s a case of Jay taking from Jack and Jack taking from Jay!

The only problem was that in the very first infomercial Jack appeared in for his Jack LaLanne Power Juicer he didn’t exhibit much pep and energy at all. In fact he looked tired and disoriented, as if someone had just dragged him from his convalescent home and he really just wanted to get back to bed. (This was the infomercial hosted by the fetching brunette whose name I didn’t catch.)

Someone must have known something was wrong with that first infomercial for the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer. A second infomercial was made, this one hosted by veteran infomercial hostess Forbes Riley, in which Jack appears with his wife Elaine. In this infomercial the old energetic Jack is back! The infomercial even concludes with Jack belting out his old TV theme song.

Meanwhile, Jay Kordich hasn’t made an infomercial in years. The most recent version of the infomercial for The Juiceman Juicer (you can see a clip of it here) doesn’t feature Jay Kordich at all. It appears, however, that Jay Kordich is still alive and plans on hosting several classes for the Learning Annex in 2007.

Where do once-famous but now almost-forgotten former celebrities turn? Some of course host infomercials. Others attempt to revive their sagging careers by debasing themselves on some “celebrity” reality show such as The Surreal Life.

But what if that star’s fame has not merely faded but has instead been replaced by infamy? What if the celebrity is now known more for the wreck he has made of his life than for whatever made him famous in the first place?

Take, for example, Gary Coleman, the former child star of Diff’rent Strokes and an E! True Hollywood Story staple. All the money he made in his “Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout, Willis” days was, he claimed, taken and squandered by his greedy parents and corrupt manager. He sued them in 1993 and filed for bankruptcy in 1999. There was even a Gary Coleman “Web-a-thon” selling Coleman-branded items to try to help get him out of debt. And things didn’t get any better from there: Coleman had to take a job as security guard to make ends meet, was charged with assaulting an autograph seeker, and made a clownish run for governor of California during the 2003 recall election.

Or consider the case of MC Hammer. Hammer was once the most popular musician in the U.S. and the most famous rapper in the world, a man whose videos for “U Can’t Touch This” and “2 Legit 2 Quit” were played ad nauseam on MTV in the early 90s. But then the usual Behind the Music scenario played out as Hammer squandered his fortune on a mansion and other bling and was forced into bankruptcy in 1996.

Can the term “tragedy” be applied to an inanimate object? If so, then the fate of the Pets.com Sock Puppet might be characterized as tragic. The Pets.com Sock Puppet remains to this day the pre-eminent icon of the Dot Com bubble era. This piece of fabric was the star of TV commercials, including a $2.6 million spot during the infamous 2000 “dot com” Super Bowl broadcast, and made an appearance as a balloon in the 1999 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. When Pets.com ceased operation in November 2000, the famous sock puppet became a mere asset, to be sold off like so many chairs and computer monitors.

They were all once as famous as anyone, and now each of these personalities is better known for his fall than for his rise. So what are these fallen stars to do? Join forces to open a “Bankrupt All-Stars Café?”

Actually, they all leveraged their reputations for making financial wrecks of their lives to shill financial services to other people who have made financial wrecks of their lives. Their commercials aired on daytime TV during broadcasts of programs such as Springer and The Maury Povitch Show, when most of the viewing audience consists of prostitutes, drug addicts, welfare bums, and people living of phony workman’s comp claims.

Gary Coleman appeared in commercials for CashCall, which provides quick, unsecured payday loans with “just a signature”—his endorsement made all the more effective by the fact that CashCall is exactly the kind of service Coleman himself may have relied on in the past and will probably need again in the very near future.

MC Hammer, the rapper with screwed up finances, peddled the services of Nationwide Financial Services, which offers mortgages and insurance for people with screwed up finances. (By the way, Hammer also appeared in the first season of The Surreal Life.)

The lucky winner of the Sock Puppet in the Pets.com fire sale was 1-800-BAR-NONE, which offers auto loans to people with “less-than-perfect credit.” The spokespuppet now utters Bar None’s poignant motto “Everyone deserves a second chance.” Below are two video clips of the dog being put to work in BarNone’s commercials. It’s a long way from the Super Bowl!