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Sweet Roll: Shoot the Infomercial First, Ask Questions Later

Twenty-four seconds into the Sweet Roll hair styler infomercial, a woman abruptly declares, “Stop the commercial! I’m the inventor of the Sweet Roll, and we’ve all heard those clichés. Let’s keep it real.” She lives up to her promise to avoid cliché—and instead brings us an infomercial that is weird, disjointed, and downright inscrutable:

Infomercials showing black-and-white video of people struggling to accomplish mundane tasks may seem hackneyed, but never before has someone failed to accomplish one of these tasks because she was suddenly assaulted by a blade-wielding maniac:

The ad never explains why Sweet Roll is superior to conventional curlers when one is attacked by a demented slasher with scissors. At least such a situation provides a better excuse for not getting one’s hair done than just being a klutz.

The strangeness continues with the product inventor’s dialogue, which has clearly been dubbed in later. This dubbed voiceover infuses a surrealistic, ghostly feel into her scenes, as if this were the first infomercial directed by David Lynch. It doesn’t help that she looks like Nadine Hurley from Twin Peaks:

Are the following women examples of the “exciting” styles Sweet Roll can create…or just ladies suffering from a bad hair day? You decide:

Getting three men to say “Sweet” in unison, followed by three women saying “Sweet Roll” is an ingenious way to infect viewers with a nasty earbug without having to spend time writing a jingle. Repeating it all over again eight seconds later with entirely different pair of threesomes is especially merciless. “Sweet. Sweet Roll.”

Pay close attention to the scene in which a girl drops a Sweet Roll on the neck of an unsuspecting boy. The narrator makes a strained attempt to connect this to the product by saying, “You’ll never be a pain in the neck again.” This offers us a clue to understanding this odd advertisement.

Clearly, they just filmed random footage and decided to piece together whatever they came up with. Quite an avant-garde way to make an infomercial!

Comments

  • 7 Responses to “Sweet Roll: Shoot the Infomercial First, Ask Questions Later”

  • The hair looks like crap and the whole infomercial looks like crap

    Comment by bookendz on April 10, 2013 at 5:45 pm

  • Is that the inventor with her hair in a ponytail? That’s a weird way to advertise a hair styling product.

    Is this a recent product? I’m asking because her outfit looks like something I bought for a job interview eight years ago.

    Comment by Julie on April 16, 2013 at 2:29 pm

  • My hair looks like those After pictures almost all the time… and I don`t even have a Sweet Roll.

    Comment by Angie on April 28, 2013 at 9:09 pm

  • This looks like a cool product actually. Using hair curlers is too much for me to bother with and that product looks like a quick fix for people like me who have straight boring hair, it looks like it might work. Doesn’t seem that bad compared to other products.

    Comment by sandy on May 8, 2013 at 1:46 pm

  • This product is a joke! It doesn’t work…tried it more than once.

    Comment by Phyllis on August 29, 2015 at 10:28 am

  • Out of all the infomercials on tv, its amazing that Paul Lucas choose this to pick on? Someone got kicked to the curb by Sweet Roll

    Comment by Randy on January 21, 2016 at 10:35 pm

  • Hey Phyllis, I use this product all the time and have never NOT seen it work! Try washing your hair and tell your buddy aj I’ll see him soon

    Comment by randy on June 1, 2016 at 6:05 am