Blog - Ridiculous Infomercial Review

The parade of infomercials trying to cash in on the success of the Snuggie Blanket with Sleeves with ever more absurd product variations just keeps marching on.

Cozy Comfort System

Imagine being in one of these situations:

• You are a hardworking leatherman or dominatrix who uses standard leather restraints to bind and gag your sex slaves. During winter your S&M dungeon gets cold. How can you keep your slave feeling comfy while still providing the level of bondage he requires?
• You are a nurse at a mental institution. Whenever a lunatic gets out of control, you strap him into a straight jacket. But how do you keep your mental patients warm while still restricting their movement to prevent them from hurting themselves and others?

The solution is the Cozy Comfort System:

Notice how the Cozy commercial maintains the poetic tradition of the Snuggie with an opening rhyming couplet.

Hoodie Footie Snuggle Suit

Apparently a large contingent of adult women desires the same kind of “footie” pajamas that toddlers wear. At least that is the belief of the Pajamagram company, which brings the world “one big warm hug you can wear” in the form of the Hoodie Footie Snuggle Suit:

“We all know someone who’s always cold around the house, even when the heat’s way up.” I fear a coming epidemic of old ladies draped head-to-toe in pink fleece.

Once again the College Humor Snuggie parody video I wrote about has proven to be prophetic. The Cozy and the Hoodie Footie are awfully close to the “Snugger”

Bonus Product: Pajama Jeans

Don’t you wish you could wear a fashionable pair of jeans that felt like you were wearing pajamas?

Me neither. But the folks at Pajamagram hope enough people do to make their Pajama Jeans a success:

Combine Pajama Jeans with a Bumpit and Booty Pop for an even better look!

The infomercial for the ShoeDini sells a shoe horn with a long telescoping handle. Very often short-form infomercials show people in black and white having unbelievably difficult struggles with common tasks (such as boiling eggs or cracking eggs). But the ShoeDini commercial just may take this impulse to a new level:

You gotta love the old man’s loud, desperate shout at the beginning. People, if grandpa and grandma are having this much trouble putting on shoes, then maybe it’s time to consider a nursing home or full-time caregiver instead of spending $14.99 for a shoe horn on a stick.

You might recognize the woman doing the voice-over from the Snuggie commercial. The ShoeDini ad begins with a similarly cutesy rhyme. And the name “ShoeDini” has to be one of the cheesiest ever, even by DRTV standards. (Shoe + Dini for Houdini because it works like magic at putting on your shoes! Get it?) But apparently the producers didn’t think the ShoeDini commercial was nearly annoying enough, so they created a new version with obnoxious comedian Gilbert Gottfried doing the voice-over!

I assure you that is not some clever YouTube parody. That is an actual commercial for the ShoeDini being broadcast on TV.

I have no idea why anyone would think the shrieking voice of a pissed-off-sounding Gilbert Gottfried would be better at selling shoe horns to senior citizens.

Kevin Trudeau is best known for appearing on infomercials selling various books (Nautral Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About; The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About; Debt Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About) and for his legal troubles, most recently the government’s action against him for claims made about his weight loss book. In recent years, however, Kevin Trudeau has also been a leading light in the conspiracy theory community, appearing on the radio program of notable conspiracist Alex Jones, attempting to infiltrate a Bilderberg meeting, and launching a paranoid podcast.

With his latest venture, Trudeau has managed to combine his two passions of making money on infomercials and peddling his wacky worldview. Quite frankly, I am in awe. Kevin Trudeau is a true marketing genius. Maybe an evil marketing genius, but a marketing genius nonetheless.

The new product is called Your Wish Is Your Command, a set of audio CDs that Kevin Trudeau guarantees will “virtually turn your brain into a transmitter and receiver of frequency and can virtually allow you to create in your life whatever you want.”

Trudeau informs us that books like The Secret and Think and Grow Rich that teach about the “law of attraction” all had a missing element that caused “95%” of readers to miss out on the promised success and riches. So you wasted your money when you bought them. But don’t worry, you can now spend your money on Your Wish Is Your Command which promises to provide that missing info you need to become healthy, wealthy, and wise.

According to Trudeau, Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, was forced by Henry Ford to remove this secret from his books because Ford could not stand letting the common people know the key to prosperity. (By the way, Trudeau seems to say in the infomercial that The Secret was based on Hill’s work. It wasn’t. The Secret was actually based on the 1910 book The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles, which goes to show that mind-science flimflam has a long history in the United States.)

Trudeau says he was invited to join an organization called “The Brotherhood” in 1975, which revealed this “secret information” to him. This knowledge empowers people to create “whatever it is they want to manifest.” Trudeau attributes his personal success to these secrets. (I wonder, then, why Kevin didn’t simply wish away the government’s legal action against him instead of whining about it on his infomercials.) Now Kevin Trudeau reveals these secrets once limited to “secret societies” of the “privileged elite” with Your Wish Is Your Command, which consists of a recording of a $10,000-a-person seminar he held in the Swiss Alps. Trudeau assures us the knowledge unveiled here will “program your brain to be a transmitter pulling into your life every desire you have.”

So Your Wish Is Your Command is pretty much like buying Aladdin’s lamp with your own personal genie to give you every thing you want…I’m not making a joke; that’s what Trudeau actually says in the infomercial:

People who have bought this CD package at the full price have written in and said it is life changing. Miracles are happening in my life. They’re becoming lucky. They’re saying I can’t believe it; it’s miraculous. I feel like I have Aladdin’s lamp and a genie. No matter what I want I can ask my genie, “Give me this.” And the genie says, “I listen and obey. Your wish is granted.” Wouldn’t you like to have your own genie to grant you your every wish?

Are you skeptical that Your Wish Is Your Command can “virtually create whatever you want in your life”? Well, Kevin Trudeau has these words for you:

Some people say it sounds too simplistic. It isn’t. Those are the people that are broke and miserable and are losers.

When you order Your Wish Is Your Command, you not receive not only the CDs, but also a “private invitation to join a very elite society.” So you get to learn the secret handshake that lets you into Kevin’s treehouse fort with all the other cool kids! Don’t forget your decoder ring!

It turns out that this “society” is something called the Global Information Network, which according to their website includes members of The Brotherhood, the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Freemasons, Yale University’s Skull and Bones, the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, Bohemian Club and many more. So no matter what flavor conspiracy theory you prefer, GIN has it on the menu.

The saying goes, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” Sure, these conspiracy wackos may have sold each other poorly mimeographed pamphlets at gun shows. And crackpot Texe Marrs produces a seemingly endless series of videos revealing the “secret” hand signals the Illuminati flash in public as a shout out to their homies. Not to mention the DVD Face to Face with the Devil in which Mr. Marrs presents pictures of every gargoyle statue and garden gnome he can find as definite proof that a Satan-worshipping cabal controls global affairs. And of course the websites and broadcasts of the conspiracy fringe are saturated with ads for gold and silver coins, which as everyone knows will be the preferred currency on post-apocalypse Earth. But mostly these guys just angrily shake their fists at the shadowy groups who secretly orchestrate and benefit from world events.

Yet Kevin Trudeau realizes, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Check out this promotional video for the Global Information Network:

Mr. Trudeau, I would like to humbly suggest an alternative definition for a “loser” than the one you have offered. A loser is someone who listens to the above pitch for the Global Information Network and imagines he’s going to be some sort of James Bond, hobnobbing with Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Auric Goldfinger over martinis inside some subterranean lair deep beneath the Swiss Alps.

Have at look of Kevin Trudeau’s Your Wish Is Your Command infomercial for yourself. Notice that after host Julie Lancaster finishes her ass-kissing of Kevin Trudeau, Kevin goes ahead and kisses his own ass even more aggressively! Kevin Trudeau’s boundless self-regards makes Donald Trump seem modest.

(You can also watch an earlier version of the Your Wish Is Your Command infomercial: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

The infomercial never reveals how much Your Wish Is Your Command costs. According to the GIN website, membership to the Global Information Network will cost you a $1000 initiation fee and $150 in monthly dues. That’s not as much money as it seems because Kevin is willing to accept payment in Federal Reserve Notes instead of demanding gold specie.

Even a search for Your Wish Is Your Command on Ebay and Amazon finds that the program sells for over well over $100. I hope someone out there will save up enough Ameros to buy this thing and then spill the “secret” online…so I can laugh at it.

Until then, I look forward to seeing the next version of the Your Wish Is Your Command infomercial in which Kevin Trudeau introduces us to his little green space alien friend that only he can see.

Ladies, let’s talk about your breasts.

The above is the opening line of the infomercial for Bosom Buddy. No, it’s not that 1980s TV series starring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari, although their characters on the show might have benefited from it.

Bosom Buddy is an exercise device like Easy Curves that promises larger, firmer breasts. The Bosom Buddy is wishbone-shaped and every woman who pushes and pulls its handles wishes this thing will really work to give her bodacious ta-tas.

The most magical thing about the Easy Curves commercial, however, is not the product, but the line at 1:35:

“I had the Snoopy nose. I wanted the perky boobs!” may be the greatest testimonial ever uttered on a broadcast infomercial.

Not being an expert on mammary terminology, I don’t know if “Snoopy nose” is a common phrase used to describe a particular breast shape or if that woman just made it up herself.

All I know is that I’ll never read Peanuts the same way again.

Here’s a blast from the past. Wendy Kaufman—better known as “Wendy the Snapple Lady”—appears in the latest infomercial for the EZ Cracker. (If you didn’t know the EZ Cracker is a kitchen device designed to spare you from the grueling agony of cracking an egg.) Check out Wendy’s debut as an infomercial pitchman (pitchwoman? pitchperson?):

Infomercials often use A-list celebs from past decades to sell products (such as Mr. T and Lee Majors). But this may be the first time an infomercial has tried to use a D-List celebrity from a past decade to sell a product.

(Wendy Kaufman also appeared on the first season of Celebrity Fit Club, which from the looks of this ad didn’t stick. I remember one episode of that program had a gruff drill sergeant on to whip the contestants into shape. The drill sergeant declared, “These celebrities have everything done for them! They never have to work for themselves!” At which point I thought, “Do Biz Markie and Wendy the Snapple Lady really get to have everything done for them?”)

Someone in the DRTV biz apparently thinks Wendy could be the next Cathy Mitchell, Vince Offer, or Billy Mays. Notice how the producers are trying so hard to make “Hellooooooo from Wendy!” (spoken with outstretched arms) the next great infomercial/pop-culture catchphrase on the order of “Hi, Billy Mays here” or “Are you following me, camera guy?” With all due respect to Ms. Kaufman, I hope they don’t succeed, because Wendy is, quite frankly, as annoying as the squealing of a tortured chipmunk with the orchestral accompaniment of forks scraped against plates.

For those who haven’t seen the original EZ Cracker commercial, here it is. Don’t miss the woman getting a mouthful of muffin loaded with egg shells.