Blog - Ridiculous Infomercial Review

There are lots of infomercials for “personal sound amplifier” products on the air. (By the way, the definition of a “personal sound amplifier” is “cheap hearing aid.”) This crowded genre of infomercial includes Listen Up, Loud N Clear, Silver Sonic XL, Lee Majors Bionic Hearing Aid, and Sonic Earz.

Although a personal sound amplifier is a pretty boring product, for some reason many of these TV commercials are strange and goofy. These hearing aid commercials have presented us with:

• Perverted men eavesdropping on hot women at the gym and at a party
• Hot women in bikinis lusting after another hot woman in a bikini at the beach.
• Paranoid home owners snooping on neighbors.
• A shrill old wife nagging her husband.

You might think that with such a crowded market there wouldn’t be room for yet another sound amplifier device. And you would think that its infomercial wouldn’t be able to match the goofiness of its predecessors. But the commercial for the IntelliEAR defies our expectations:

That woman at the beginning who storms in on her husband shrieking, “Would you please turn down the TV!” manages to be an even more psychotic shrew than the woman who bitches at her hubby in the Listen Up ad.

The signature of the IntelliEAR infomercial is the sudden materialization of the device on a person’s ear, accompanied by a ding, a British voice saying “IntelliEAR,” and a ditzy expression on the face of the recipient. (If some gadget suddenly and mysteriously attached itself to your ear, I don’t think a pleasant smile would be your reaction.)

But IntelliEAR must be a really good product. The hunter not only hears far-away sound but also detects the exact species of animal scurrying in the forest by sound alone.

The acting in the IntelliEAR infomercial is so awful that one wonders if the producers were intentionally trying to make a dumb ad in a pathetic attempt to turn this thing into a viral video.

I wrote a complete review of the HealthMaster blender infomercial starring former talk show host Montel Williams, Forbes Riley, and psychic Sylvia Browne. Check it out:

http://www.infomercial-hell.com/healthmaster/

And don’t miss the video clip of “highlights” from Sylvia Browne at the bottom of the page.

Here are some more things about the HealthMaster infomercial I didn’t mention in the review:

• There are actually two versions of the “Living Well with Montel” infomercial for the HealthMaster. The half-hour version is pretty boring and mostly features Montel and Forbes making recipes with the Health Master “emulsifier.” The full-length hour-long version is the one I review. It has a lot of extraneous crap that turns it into a real freak show.
• If you watch the video clip, “Sylvia Browne Highlights” you will see the tease that starts the infomercial.

  At around 0:19-0:28, the announcer says, “Don’t miss Sylvia’s…shocking psychic predictions, including a frightening revelation about one woman…”

  Sylvia says, “I call this the desert period.”

  And the announcer concludes, “…that could save her life and yours.”

  All while we see images of this crying woman:

  

  Near the end of the infomercial, Sylvia makes predictions for 3 women. However, the crying woman shown in the beginning is never seen again. Nor do we ever hear Sylvia Browne explain what she means by the “desert period.”

  I wonder if any viewers watched this program just to find out about that lady, only to be tricked into watching an hour long infomercial and still have their curiosity unallayed.

• As I imply in my review, I strongly suspect (though I certainly can’t prove) that the segment with the fat kid (Brent Jr.) is scripted. But I also think that kid is a great actor who really pulls off being upset and surly at the beginning. The thing that most makes me think it was a foregone conclusion that Brent Jr. would love his veggie juice is the way he positions his upper lip after drinking it. It is as if he is making sure the cameras get a good shot of the green mustache left behind.

Imagine life as a pet fish.

Instead of getting an entire pond, stream, or lake to roam in, you are imprisoned within the confines of an aquarium or goldfish bowl for the rest of your life. You have little or no privacy, and strange faces periodically gaze at you through the glass walls of your cell. These large creatures will sometimes even shake you to the core by tapping on the glass, the reason for which eludes your comprehension.

Even worse comes when your owners decide to teach their 8-year-old “responsibility” by having the kid take care of you. Your feeding schedule suddenly becomes erratic. And the time between tank cleanings grows longer and longer, forcing you to swim in cloudy water infused with your own feces.

But the one single, solitary benefit of being someone’s pet is that you don’t have to do any work: Your owners just drop food in front of you.

Until now:

Fish School promises to get your pet guppy to perform tricks like Shamu at SeaWorld. You apparently use the “same mammal training techniques” pros use to train performing dolphins. (Of course, your pet fish isn’t a mammal at all, but never mind.)

While dog owners are pampering their animals with memory foam beds and indoor bathrooms, fish owners are forcing their animals start earning a living by using Fish School’s “patented feeding wand” to give “positive reinforcement” to make their little swimmers work their tails off. No trick, no food!

Pity the poor pet fish. His life just got worse.

I recently received this email from a reader named Marissa asking about an infomercial for “Anybody Can Draw”

Subject: Anybody Can Draw
Message: I’ve looked everywhere for the anybody can draw infomercial. The host was Tracey Gold and the product was made by TJ Johnson. HELP!!!

Unfortunately, I had never seen (or even heard of) the Anybody Can Draw infomercial.

I assumed the Tracey Gold mentioned is the actress who played Carol Seaver in the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains.

A web search for more info found only this Amazon page selling the “Nature Scenes” video from the Any Body Can Draw series by T. J. Johnson. But no picture or other info is available there.

Then I noticed that the title of the product is really “Any Body Can Draw” with “Any Body” spelled with two words, not one. That led me to this page, that contains a 10 minute clip of the infomercial:

http://rocketworksmedia.com/portfolio/any-body-can-draw-infomercial

If anyone can provide memories or info about the Any Body Can Draw infomercial, please leave a comment below.

Last month, I wrote a blog post about a Snuggie parody video from College Humor. The mock commercial featured “Snuggie spin-offs” that went from a full-body Snuggie, to one the covers a whole couch, to one that covers a whole room, to one that covers a whole house. In case you missed it:

What was meant as comedy turned out to be prophecy.

A commercial for a real product called Kuttles actually sells a 2-person blanket with 3 sleeves. Check out this Snuggie for couples:

This is a great example of the risk anyone who tries to parody an infomercial faces: the real thing can sometimes end up being even more absurd.

It seems to me that the “struggle” shown in the Kuttles commercial could be solved by just using a bigger blanket instead of a dishrag!

(By the way, the blonde woman at 1:18 is the same actress who appears in the Egg Genie commercial.)