Blog - Ridiculous Infomercial Review

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.

Sure, we all want to prevent the Illuminati, CFR, and Bilderbergers from using government satellites to read our brainwaves and control our thoughts. But wearing a tin foil hat is soooo passé. Instead, protect yourself with the EP2 E-Pendant with EMR Blocker:

And as an added bonus the E-Pendant can be placed near food or drink to “revitalize that food or drink in as little as 30 seconds, and you can taste and feel the difference.” Great, now I don’t have to throw away that moldy can of Spam sitting in the back of my fridge!

It will surprise no one to learn that E-Pendant is a sponsor of Kevin Trudeau’s radio show and that Kevin Trudeau heartily endorses the pendant and recommended it to his listeners as a Christmas present, claiming “I’m wearing my E-Pendant right now and never take it off!”

Learn more about the “finest protection from electronic interference” at www.EPendantDeal.com.

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An ultra-high frequency thank you to reader znkp for letting us know about the E-Pendant

With TV Hat you can get a big screen movie experience when watching videos on your smart phone or iPod…as long as you don’t mind looking like a complete weirdo in public:

Yes, people may give you strange looks when you wear the TV Hat…but you won’t be able to see them so it doesn’t matter.

The TV Hat commercial looks like an infomercial parody, but the product is real: you can buy it at www.BuyTVHatNow.com and watch this video of TV Hat at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

The product TV Hat most reminds me of is Snazzy Napper. Now women living in lands that require them to wear a burqa or niqab can protect their modesty while privately enjoying a wide variety of decadent Western entertainments. And men everywhere can watch their pornographic videos in public without the risk of a security guard roughly escorting them out of the airport or shopping mall.

Strap on a TV Hat and people will mock your appearance, but at least they won’t give away the ending of the movie you are watching!

The Nature’s Greeting (www.NaturesGreetingPlants.com) product will evenly divide the public. Half will find Nature’s Greeting a cute and clever novelty. The other half will find it pointless, stupid, and creepy.

Nature’s Greeting is a bean plant inside a can that when grown contains a phrase written on its “central bean.” Nature’s Greeting is foliage with a message, a plant with a point, a legume with letters, and a bean with meaning.

The phrases available include such common well-wishes as:

• I Love You
• Happy Birthday
• Congratulations
• XOXO
• Thank You
• Friends Forever
• Best Wishes
• Get Well Soon

The plant needs to grow for 10 days before the recipient will be able to view the message, which seems like a long time to wait for such short and clichéd greetings, when a card can immediately communicate all that and more.

One dilemma people will have when giving Nature’s Greeting as a gift is whether or not to tell the recipient about the message written on it beforehand. If you tell the recipient, it will ruin the surprise. If you don’t tell the recipient, then he or she might assume that a cunning witch or wicked warlock has trapped the soul of a loved one inside the plant. (Maybe the same warlock who imprisoned the Nature’s Greeting announcer at the bottom of a well.)

Because it takes a full 10 days before the message is visible, Nature’s Greeting might be an ideal way for cowardly people to communicate bad news. Look for future versions of Nature’s Greeting to include messages like:

• U R Fired
• Let’s Divorce
• Get STD Test

The Igia Air-O-Sage Back & Shoulder Massager promises a soothing massage…and as an added benefit you get to have a black tortoise shell strapped to your back!

On second thought, the black color is actually more reminiscent of a beetle’s exoskeleton. So now you can pretend to be Gregor Samsa…if Kafka’s protagonist could enjoy a soothing back rub whenever he needed it!

Plus, when your back massage is done you can turn Air-O-Sage around and pretend you are a member of a SWAT team clothed in Kevlar body armor.

Not content to make a weird-looking back massager, Igia also created the Air-O-Sage Leg Massager, which makes it look like you are wearing two light blue leg casts:

Strange as it is, the appearance of the product isn’t the strangest thing about the Air-O-Sage Leg Massager infomercial.

Foremost has to be the voice of spokesperson Linda Burks who sounds like a scary drag queen. (Her square jaw doesn’t help alleviate that impression.) On closer examination, it seems as if the audio of the entire commercial has been slowed down, making everyone’s voice sound somewhat deeper and more dull-witted. It is not clear if the original infomercial had this problem or if something happened to the video that was uploaded to YouTube.

Also interesting is what appears on screen when the woman says, “It’s like dozens of fingers massaging my legs”…

…just in case her simile was too abstract for some viewers.