Blog - Ridiculous Infomercial Review

If you haven’t seen the commercial for Cash4Gold.com, then you probably haven’t been watching any television at all for the past 6 months. Cash4Gold.com is a service that lets you mail in your gold and receive money for it—and their commercials are on TV all the damn time! But if you’re one of the few who still hasn’t seen the original Cash 4 Gold ad here it is:

Recently two new versions of his commercial have hit the airwaves.

If you know any Latinos, then you know that they just loves their gold jewelries! So it was only natural that Cash4Gold would create a Spanish-language ad. This one promotes their companion website called OroPorDinero.com:

My Spanish is less-than-perfect, but it seems as if the testimonials are just copies of the ones in the English version of the ad. The first testimonial in the Spanish commercial takes place in the same room as the first testimonial in the English commercial and it is almost a word for word translation. Both women received exactly $583 for their gold!

Both the Spanish and English ads also feature testimonials from women who sent in their ring from their “first marriage” (“primero matrimonio”) and got money the “next day” (“próximo día”).

The Spanish commercial is missing one testimonial—probably because they could not find a Spanish-speaking transsexual on short notice.

But wait Cash4Gold fans…there’s more. A new English version of the Cash4Gold.com commercial is now being aired:

I’m really baffled as to why they bothered making this new commercial, because it seems almost exactly like the previous one. In fact, the video with the male presenter is exactly the same; only some of the testimonials are slightly changed.

The first testimonial is almost a word for word copy of the one in the earlier version. The main differences are that a different woman is saying the words in a different room. So I guess we have three different women who all received exactly $583 for their gold from Cash4Gold. What an amazing coincidence!

The final testimonial features the same woman as before, only her hair is pulled back and instead of saying she “got money the very next day” she says that she “got more money that I ever could have imagined.”

The graphics that follow still say “Money Sent Within 24 Hours” but perhaps they didn’t want to mislead people into thinking they’d receive money that soon.

The thing that pleases me most about the new Cash4Gold spot is what they didn’t change: Namely the testimonial from the annoying old transsexual. Don’t mess with a classic!

Steve Parker, M.D. of the Advanced Mediterranean Diet Blog tipped us off to the latest news about the ongoing legal woes of infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau.

A recent court ruling seems to really and truly prohibit Trudeau from appearing on infomercials for a period of three years. This ruling follows a long line of previous court decisions that found Trudeau had misrepresented his products.

Because Trudeau had falsely claimed that his “Coral Calcium Supreme” product could cure cancer, a 2004 a court order banned him from selling his products on infomercials—but it created an exception that allowed him to sell books as long as he did “not misrepresent the content of the books.”

In 2007, a court found Trudeau had violated the earlier court order by making false claims in an infomercial selling his book The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About; however that decision prescribed no punishment.

But in August of 2008, Judge Robert W. Gettleman banned Kevin Trudeau from “participating in the production or publication of any infomercial for any product, including books” for 3 years. The ruling also fined Trudeau $5 million.

This press release from the FTC provides details about the ruling. I especially liked this part:

Stating that Trudeau was “not a credible witness,” the judge noted several “undeniably false” statements in his infomercials, finding that, contrary to Trudeau’s claims:

• the diet protocol could not be done “easily” and “at home,” because the protocol described in Trudeau’s book requires colonics, which must be done at the office of a licensed practitioner, as well as injection of human growth hormone;
• dieters could not “complete” or “finish” Trudeau’s four-phase program, because Trudeau’s book states that “Phase 4 is for the rest of your life”;
• dieters could not eat “anything” they want, because Trudeau’s book prescribes that dieters following Phase 4 must eat “only 100% organic food,” and no “brand name” food, “fast food,” or “food served by regional or national chain restaurants”; and
• the diet protocol did not require “no exercise,” because Trudeau’s book states that three of the diet’s four phases, including Phase 4, require walking one hour outside every day.

Trudeau didn’t merely make claims for a technique that turned out not to “work” in practice. He told bald-face lies that about what was actually written in the very book he was selling! He wrote one thing in his own book and then told people the opposite about it on the infomercial.

So it appears that Trudeau’s career as an infomercial scammer may finally be put on hiatus—at least until 2011.

But if this ruling was handed down in August, why are Trudeau’s infomercials still being aired, especially The Hot Seat infomercial for his Debt Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About? This blog post from TV station WSYR in Syracuse may give an explanation:

[Trudeau] likely purchased television time for these ads long ago, and stations are just learning about the FTC’s findings, so they will probably be phased out shortly.

On the other hand, since Trudeau has defied court decisions before perhaps he will do the same with this one—until “They” are forced to throw him in prison.

A reader of this website emailed me about the commercial for Liberator Medical Supply some months back. (I tried looking for the email but couldn’t find it.)

This commercial promotes a service for people who use catheters, which are tubes for people with urinary problems. Now, before a bunch of humorless twits start posting prissy comments, I have no reason to doubt that Liberator Medical Supply provides a useful service for people with serious medical conditions. Nevertheless, any TV commercial selling tubes for people to stick in their pee-holes is going to be funny!

Fan of poo have the Dual Action Cleanse infomercial; now fans of piss have the Liberator commercial—although Holly is a lot easier to look at than Klee Irwin.

This is the first time I have ever heard “cath” used as a verb. Before this commercial I had only heard the word “Cath” as a nickname for women named Catherine. I’m sure women name Catherine or Kathy will be displeased with this commercial’s use of the term “cath,” but they can find a sympathetic ear from guys named Dick, Peter, and Rod. In any case, knowing this alternative meaning for “cath” might be the only thing that would make watching NBC’s lame new sitcom Kath and Kim interesting.

The most interesting dialogue in the ad is: “I was nervous about calling strangers, but these strangers, they quickly became my friends.” I wonder how the conversations go between Holly and her new “friends”

“I had asparagus for dinner last night and, boy, I’d sure hate to stick that smelly catheter back inside of my urinary track. Peeeheeewww!! It’s great that I can get non-peed-on catheters from you guys every time I need to cath.”

I bet this commercial will entice lonely people without urinary problems to start signing up for the catheter service just so that they can make friends as well.

Among the most memorable of the infomercial real estate gurus were brothers John and Greg Rice, who for years promoted their Cash Flow Generator workshops on TV. What made these two stand out was that they were not only identical twins but also dwarfs. In fact, the 2 foot, 10 inch pair were in the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest living identical twins.

In November 2005, John Rice died from complications during leg surgery. Their Cash Flow Generator infomercial, however, continued to be broadcast as late as August 2006. Here is a video clip from one of their infomercials:

As you can see from the video, the Rice brothers were even less shy than Tom Vu in admitting that other people’s bad fortune could be a great boon for your real estate portfolio.

“Do people in your area ever get divorced? Do they lose their job, for whatever reason? Do people in your area ever get transferred on their job?”

“Do they ever die? Do people in your area ever inherit a property they really don’t want or know what to do with? Or are there people in your area who are trying to do real estate the hard way, trying to deal with problem tenants, and they just want to get out?”

Before appearing on infomercials, the Rice twins had many small parts (no pun intended!) in movies and TV shows. The following article from the June 17, 1980 edition of the (now-defunct) supermarket tabloid Weekly World News discussed their upcoming roles in the TV series “Foul Play” (based on the Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn movie of the same name) and mentioned the fact that the brothers were real estate millionaires in West Palm Beach, Florida:

According to the Classic TV Archive, the short-lived “Foul Play” series aired six episodes between January and August of 1981. Watch this clip of the opening credits from Foul Play, and sure enough John and Greg Rice appear near the end.

And check out these photos of the Rice brothers from the TV show.

Read more about the John and Greg Rice and their inspiring story in the article, Rice twin feels void with brother’s loss

If you do a search for “infomercial” on YouTube, you will find hundreds of infomercial parody videos. Nearly all of these parodies, however, are totally witless, completely unfunny, and an utter waste of time. That is why I was surprised to come across a parody of the ShamWow commercial that actually made me laugh.

If you haven’t seen the commercial for the ShamWow cloths with pitchman Vince Offer here is the original:

Fans of the ShamWow ad will find a lot to recognize in the following parody.

NSFW Alert: The following video contains language that is definitely not safe for work!

The man does a pretty good imitation of Vince Offer and I loved the lines, “You gettin’ this, A**hole” and “Sham-F*ckin’-Wow”