Blog - Ridiculous Infomercial Review

You might suspect that an infomercial with a product named Hot Booties would be selling a video like Girls Gone Wild, or maybe an item to enhance the derriere like Booty Pop. In fact Hot Booties has nothing to do with the “booty,” so horny dudes watching this infomercial to see some fine tail will be disappointed.

Hot Booties are slippers that you heat in a microwave oven to keep your feet warm. The biggest question is whether after using Hot Booties for a while your feet will start smelling like Hot Pockets and microwave popcorn…or will your Hot Pockets and microwave popcorn start to smell like your stinky feet?

This would be a great product to go along with the Forever Lazy: you could be wearing both a onesie and “booties”—just like a real infant!

The hosts of the Hot Booties infomercial are Tim Goewey, last seen on the Plate Talk infomercial, and Taylor Baldwin, last seen on the Mighty Saw infomercial. If these two keep on making infomercials this absurd, they will definitely be two pitchmen to keep an eye on.

If you are thinking about buying this product, I recommend you get it quickly. It is only a matter of time before some grandma microwaves her Hot Booties for 60 minutes instead of 60 seconds, scalds her feet, sues the manufacturer for creating such a “dangerous” product, and forces these microwavable slippers off the market.

Someone at the Jimmy Kimmel Live show has seen the Shake Weight and Free Flexor infomercials and imagined what the next stage for somewhat off-color exercise equipment would look like. Behold the Tug Toner!

(Warning: This parody video is lewd, so if you are offended by such matter you should probably skip this one.)

Sure the Tug Toner might make a man look like he is engaging in self-abuse…but it uses “Dynamic Resistance Technology”…so give it a try.

How often have you wanted to throw something at a dofus on a TV infomercial? The producers of the Whip-It infomercial gave a bunch of lucky mall shoppers the chance to hurl food at host Art Edmonds:

Art Edmonds was taking on a much bigger risk than he realized. Who knows what could have happened once a crowd was given permission to throw off their thin covering of civilization? Someone might have gotten the idea to “whip it” out and see if the cleaning product could remove urine stains. Another person might have gotten so whipped up that he would have grabbed a janitor’s mop handle and violated poor Art in a most merciless way.

If the crowd of shoppers would have taken out their years of frustration at the lousy products, inflated shipping costs, deceptive offers, and poor customer service inflicted on them by TV infomercials, this video might have ended up looking more like the capture of Muammar Gaddafi.

The Pillow Pets ad was one of the most successful TV infomercials targeting the kids’ market. You cannot step into general big box retailer without seeing piles of these things on display. Pillow Pets are succinctly described by the annoying jingle, “It’s a pillow. It’s a pet. It’s a pillow pet.”

If you are lucky enough to have never seen the Pillow Pets commercial, then please watch the video below and become as miserable as the rest of us.

The incredible popularity of Pillow Pets has inspired more imitators than any infomercial product since the Snuggie launched a thousand knock offs. The basic formula seems to be:

1. Create a stuffed animal.
2. Make that stuffed animal convertible into something else.
3. Produce an infomercial with a really obnoxious jingle.
4. Get rich.

Here are a few of the products hoping to become the next Pillow Pet:

“They are happy, Happy Nappers and they love to play with you!”

Like Pillow Pets, Happy Nappers are stuffed animals that can become a pillow. But the gimmick here is that they fold up into a dwelling appropriate for that type of stuffed animal. So the dragon doll folds up into a castle pillow, the cow doll folds up into a barn pillow, and so on. The Happy Napper is the only Pillow Pet rip-off (so far) to find any commercial success.

The Happy Napper jingle is just as grating as the one for Pillow Pets, but at least it is a lot less infectious:

“Pawggles, my Pawggles, they give me the giggles. Pawggles, my Pawggles, they turn into slippers.”

Pawggles are slippers that fold up into stuffed animals. And imagine how much fun kids will have playing with a toy that has been in contact all day with dirty floors and their disgusting feet!

“Stomp, stomp, stomp Stompeez!”

Stompeez also combines stuffed animals with slippers, but they don’t fold up into a stuffed animal. So really these are not much different than the animal head slippers that have been around for years. The only difference is that a body part of the animal will move whenever a kid “stomps” the slippers. The jingle is pretty straightforward: “Stomp, stomp, stomp Stompeez!”

“It’s a pillow! It’s a blanket! It’s a Quillow!”

The Quillow is really more of a Snuggie rip-off, but it’s catchphrase, “It’s a pillow! It’s a blanket! It’s Quillow!” was clearly inspired by the Pillow Pets slogan:

“It’s the Rollee Rollee Pollee! It’s the Rollee Rollee Pollee!”

Rollee Pollee is a blanket with a pillow attached. It really doesn’t really convert into anything and it is not a stuffed animal (although a Pillow Pets copy called “Huggie Pets” is offered as a free bonus). The jingle, however, is as irritating as the one in the Pillow Pets commercial. Let’s hope Rollee Pollee never catches on:

“BlanKid Buddy. BlanKid Buddy. It’s a pillow, a blanket, and backpack, too!”

Why convert between 2 items when you can convert between 4 items! BlanKid Buddy brags that it is “a 4-In-1 blanket, backpack, pillow, and plush animal.” Its song is even more repugnant than the Pillow Pets ditty:

“WugglePets. WugglePets. Snug ’em. I hug ’em. My WugglePets”

If you ordered a stuffed animal and it arrived without the stuffing, you would considered it defective and return it for a replacement. But Wuggle Pets wants you to believe a stuffed animal without stuffing is a good thing because you get the joy of stuffing it yourself. This is an attempt to get the Build-a-Bear experience on the cheap:

And just to finish off those of you who still have your sanity, here is a medley of all these annoying jingles:

Please leave a comment to let us know which of these jingles you find the most annoying.

You might assume that the minimum requirement for a television pitchman would be an ability to clearly pronounce words, but the producers of the ID Blocker infomercial think otherwise:

Noam has to be the unlikeliest imaginable candidate to become the next Billy Mays…so I wish him all the best.

His appearance, accent, and mannerisms made me suspect Noam is Italian, but the name “Noam” is of Hebrew origin, so perhaps he is from Israel. (I am ruling out Mypos and Caspiar as possibilities.)

The producers undoubtedly knew Noam’s diction would be less the perfect, but did they realize that the English words that would give him the most trouble would in fact be the name of the product itself: ID Blocker?

Although Noam is the most striking thing about the ID Blocker infomercial, I also appreciate the burglar who shows up:

This man drapes himself from head to toe in black to cover up his identity…yet decides to rummage through someone’s recycling bin in broad daylight! Perhaps someone used ID Blocker on his dictionary, causing him to become confused about the difference between “conspicuous” and “inconspicuous.”

Still, you have to feel sorry for someone who goes to all the trouble of dressing up like a 1950s movie cat burglar, only to have his scheme foiled by ID Blocker. Better luck on that jewel heist.

The ID Blocker infomercial is great but it could have been made even more awesome by including i-Lolly-P as a sidekick for Noam.