Blog - Ridiculous Infomercial Review

The IonPod is a metal bottle that alkalizes your water to reduce the levels of acidity in your body. Yes, it is a dull product, but this product resulted in one strange and off-kilter infomercial:

You got to love how they associate acidity levels with the aging process itself by showing a young boy morphing into an old man. If only you hadn’t consumed so many acidic Diet Cokes you could still be five-years-old today!

To further drive home the point, they produce a bar graph with the face of a toddler next to “ph9″ and a sad-looking old man next to “ph6.”

In case you still didn’t get the message that “acid = old = bad” they slap the words “Toxic” and “Acidic” over the geezer’s face.

Hey, what did that guy ever do to them!

They then cut to a woman bubbling up from a fountain in the middle of a lake, clothed a spotless white dress and hoisting the IonPod, not unlike Lady Liberty holding her torch aloft.

To prove how practical and popular this product is, three teenagers are shown clinking their IonPods together as part of some unidentified toast…

…of course their IonPods are filled with Captain Morgan, but the replaceable mineral cartridge will ensure their alcohol has an improved alkaline balance for better health.

We also get to enjoy a glimpse into the home life of a man sitting at his breakfast table who takes the IonPod from his wife with trepidation, as if he fears he is about to be poisoned.

Once he has finished taking his hesitant sip, he nods in approval, pleasantly surprised that the IonPod did not cause him to immediately begin vomiting up blood.

Don’t you hate it when your cell phone is too far to reach but not too far to see yet you are not able to see the screen because the phone is lying flat instead of upright?

At long last Happy Sack has rescued all of us from this most pervasive of tribulations:

The predicament faced by the producers of the Happy Sack infomercial is that the “problem” their product solves is in fact a non-problem. So to make it seem like a problem, the actress in the beginning has to struggle to reach a mobile phone three feet away as if she were climbing Kilimanjaro with a broken leg while being pursued by a rabid mountain goat.

They then added a sound effect to the “falling” cell phone (at 0:07) that makes it sound as if a giant redwood were being felled.

And look at how far away the woman is sitting from her end table when the non-Happy Sack phone rings…

…and how close she sits before the phone propped-up by Happy Sack rings:

To top it all off, the name “Happy Sack” is synonymous with “Contended Scrotum”—which will probably prove more of a problem for people than whatever problem this product is supposed to be solving.

Happy Sack is available in your choice of black, pink, or zebra…which will make is easy to coordinate with your zebra-print Snuggie.

Seeking to become the next Tom Vu or Dave Del Dotto is rapper Vanilla Ice (né Robert Van Winkle), best known for his early Nineties mega-hit “Ice Ice Baby.” He has launched a website called Vanilla Ice Real Estate, which is apparently an outgrowth of some reality TV show he did called The Vanilla Ice Project.

Like Mr. T in the Flavorwave Oven infomercial, Vanilla Ice makes full use of his decades-old pop culture persona to sell his product. The video on his website features such hip hop tropes as luxury cribs, a Rolls Royce, and fanned-out $100 bills. Vanilla Ice promises to teach us how to “pimp out properties and get paid” with his “off the hook training” which will result in allowing you to “pop your collar and make ‘em holla.”

If you actually follow Mr. Van Winkle’s instructions to give him your email address, you will be taken to this page, where a video promises a one-on-one strategy session “simple as a pimple.” So does that mean you could actually get a chance to interact with the great Vanilla Ice himself? No, he promises only that you will get a strategy session with one of his “team members.”

The free “Vanilla Ice Real Estate Investment Guide” lacks any dope rhymes or admonitions to “wax a chump like a candle.” Instead, it is a dull and dry 90 page ebook with passages such as:

The “pros” of enlisting a property management firm is that they usually have a solid leasing system already in place on how to manage properties, they have relationships with vendors like eviction attorneys and maintenance men who are needed to run a great management system and they can handle all the issues and calls with tenants. The “cons” are that they charge 10% of the gross rental income, which can account for a large percentage of your positive cash flow.

Word to your mother!

It is not clear what kind of person would find all of this appealing. People seriously thinking about real estate investing would likely be hesitant to risk their time and money on a system created by a has-been rapper who uses moldy slang in every other sentence. On the other hand, most of those in the urban hip hop community lack the capital required to invest in real estate…in addition to thinking Vanilla Ice is old and “straight whack.”

Nonetheless, I fervently hope that Vanilla Ice goes ahead and starts broadcasting a TV infomercial for his real estate investment system. If so, he would be the fourth member of the Surreal Life season two cast to have appeared on a TV infomercial (the others being Ron Jeremy, Erik Estrada, and Tammy Faye Bakker). Certainly it would be more entertaining that the latest Armando Montelongo snoozefest.

We will all be sadly disappointed, however, when it turns out the Vanilla Ice real estate investing system is actually lifted from the “Queen/David Bowie Real Estate Investing System.”

Here is one product that will be popular among viewers of To Catch a Predator. The Action Alert software constantly monitors your child’s Internet activity for “any evidence of online dangers.”

The best part of the Action Alert infomercial comes at 1:11. When one of the moms asks how the software will let parents know about suspicious activity, host Jake Meyers turns to the camera, flashes the Jazz hands, and enthusiastically belts out, “WITH A TEXT MESSAGE!” At which point everyone expects Jake to break into a song and dance routine about the joys of spying on your kid’s computer. Instead, he merely returns to his product demo, to the disappointment of all.

Action Alert lets paranoid parents view a recording of their child’s entire computer activity. And what parent wouldn’t be happy to spend countless hours reading thrilling chats like:

- what r u having 4 dinner?
- idk. maybe a hot dog
- omg i havnt had hot dog in soooo long lol!
- i rlly need 2 buy new clothes

The other interesting thing about the Action Alert infomercial is that the host is surrounded by four women. Aren’t any fathers concerned about their children’s online activities? Maybe these ladies are actually worried about their husbands interacting with suspicious characters and disreputable websites.

The Magic Thimble is a pretty dull product, a rubber finger tip that helps you turn pages more easily. Yet this unremarkable product ended up with one of the craziest infomercials ever:

Oh where to start…

The pitchman here is a gentleman who goes by the handle “EL” and he is accompanied by his sidekick “i-Lolly-P”—who just happens to be a robot with lollipops stuck inside its head. The robot i-Lolly-P never says nor does anything during the commercial other than stand next to EL. If you can figure out what a lollipop-filled robot has to do with a rubber finger tip, then you are a wiser person than I.

“The Magic Thimble is great for children with special needs. Any supermom can use them,” Susan from Alamo, Texas assures us. It is not, however, clear why mentally handicapped people would have any more trouble turning pages than anyone else. It is also not clear why the mentally handicapped child in the commercial needs to have his face blurred—unless it is to hide the fact that the actor is neither retarded nor a child.

Do kids have such trouble turning pages that an entire class needs to be outfitted with Magic Thimbles? Or is that just a special class that practices synchronized page turning?

If you are reading your books on top of the kitchen sink, then turning pages is the least of your problems.

Yes, they actually advocate using the Magic Thimble to “just pour a thimble-ful of spirits”—a pressing need long in search of solution.

The free bonus item offered (which is a “Sellers loss, Buyers GAIN™”) is a finger massager…also known as a vibrator…usually used as a sex aid. This bonus doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the main product other than both items are placed on the tip of the finger. Or maybe because Magic Thimble looks like a French tickler they thought they might as well offer a real sex aid as the bonus. Or maybe the vibrator is i-Lolly-P’s cousin.

Just in case you are wondering if this entire video isn’t just some attempt at absurdist humor, you can actually purchase the Magic Thimble at www.GetMagicThimble.com

EL concludes the Magic Thimble infomercial by busting a rhyme: “Whether you’re a geek, read freak, or spill juice when you eat, you need this in your life.” Although I know I won’t get my wish, I sincerely hope that EL and i-Lolly-P become the next Billy Mays.