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HOUSEWARES: MAKING YOUR LIFE MISERABLE
EURO-PRO BAGLESS STICK SHARK VACUME
The fine people from Euro-Pro, makers of irons and steam cleaners, now bring you the Bagless Stick Shark, a miniature bag-first style vacuumn cleaner.
"Finally... the vacume you've always wanted is here" goes the opening dialogue. As bad as the voice and character actors are in this "flick", I do find myself liking it.
Shame on me!!
If you call this number, they will think you saw it on KING-5 in Seattle.
Every TV station that broadcasts it is assigned a different phone number.
A man named Mark Rosen, claiming to be the president of Euro-Pro demonstrates the vacume to Maddy Press, the female host.
He starts off by sucking up some dirt and rice on low-pile rugs, then he sucks up dirt and Coffee-Mate from tile flooring.
Oh boy.
But then we get to the good part: the Bagless Stick Shark greedily consuming things like noodles, party confetti, peanut M&Ms, and rat fur from carpet props.
Then he moves onto huge bolts, marbles, map pins, and rubber bands. Items like this would destroy
a regular vacume. Then he sucks up a length of red ribbon to show how it goes directly into the tank without getting tangled up in brushes or motor fans. Finally, he puts the hose in
a big glass of Coffee-Mate or powdered milk to show how fast it gets sucked up. These items are regularly shown being picked up as the infomercial goes on. But my favorite part of course, is when they destroy regular vacumes or show them not being able
to do the simplest cleaning job. I just love seeing things get broken or destroyed.
KODAK MOMENTS:
In one "test", the Stick Shark and a regular upright vacume suck up a long ribbon. The Stick Shark devours it (of course), but the regular cleaner sucks up about a foot of it
and then starts to make this terrible awful squealing sound as the ribbon gets wound around the brush roll and the belt starts to burn. :-)
In another "test", the Stick Shark is pitted against an electric broom, an ordinary upright vacume, and a handheld dust devil type cleaner.
The Shark, of course, handles all the cleaning chores with remarkable ease, while the woman using the other cleaners is just having an awful time.
Her electric broom isn't picking up the dried split peas, the upright can't clean the stairs, and the dust devil starts burning when she tries to suck up metal screws with it.
Every time this infomercial comes on, I turn up the volume so I can hear the dust devil vacume destroy itself. :-D
The "demonstration" where the Stick Shark picks up a 210 pound safe is definitely rigged, but not the way you think it is. There are no camera tricks being used, and no physics laws are being violated - yes, the Stick Shark will hold up the 210lb safe, but put a bigger bowl assembly on it, and it can probably hold up a VW Bug too. The whole secret to this demonstration lies with the suction cup & bowl assembly.
An ordinary vacume should be able to do this using the same bowl & suction cup arrangement, assuming you can block off all the air inlets except the one supplying the hose itself.
Net ad says it can pick up a 135 pound safe or two bowling balls.
They also demonstrate how to empty the "shark tank" on the vacume. It shows a woman opening up a built-in garbage compactor, and dumping the vacume's dirt cup into it.
This is funny, because anyone who's so poor that they have to buy this $70 vacume instead of a regular $200 hoover is definitely not going to own a garbage compactor.
They should show it being emptied into a paper grocery sack (the poor folks garbage can), or into a cheap Rubbermaid kitchen can.
This is why I wanted a bagless vaccum.
Toward the end of the program, the male host of this interesting infomercial starts to act as though he is on something. Something like a jar of instant coffee, a box of Vivarin, and some of those red sudafed cold tabs
all at the same time.
He really acts like a speed freak toward the end. If you value your sleep, you might want to shut this infomercial off about halfway through. The only thing you'll miss is a demonstration
where they hook up the Stick Shark to 65 feet of clear pipe and have it vacume up ribbons from the other end. It's pretty cool to watch, but nothing an ordinary bag-first or tank-first type cleaner can't do.
This commercial made me do something I've never done before: pick up the phone and BUY the asinine cheap looking thing!!
I need a vaccumn that can pick up things like cigarette stubs, styrofoam shipping turds, pennies, and rubber bands.
I don't need a vacume that can pick up a safe, but I do need one to pick up these large, hard objects.
My regular Eureka cleaner won't suck them up, and I spend more time
with the vacume upside down freeing up the brush roller than I do actually vacuming. And I probably haven't changed the bag in years - it's as hard as a cement block!
The ability to just quickly dump the Shark's cup in the garbage is appealing, plus its supposed ability to deal with objects that destroy regular vacumes.
Once I receive my Euro-Pro Bagless Stick Shark and then try to destroy it, I'll post an update right here on this page.
(I received my Stick Shark on 02-12-02, so here's the update)
The Stick Shark vs. A Roll of Toilet Paper!
Find out who won by going HERE!!!
Because several regular vaccumes were destroyed on-camera (and I love that!), the Stick Shark gets 3 big seats!!
P.S. I found "vacuum" misspelled very often on the web - even from commercial websites that sell things like "vacumes", "vaccumns" and "vaccums", so I decided to missspell it on this page as well.
Before you call me to the rug about my spelling, know that it was done intentionally. The graphics peppered throughout were found on various commercial "vacume cleaner" websites.
FOLLOW MY PROGRESS AS I TRY TO DESTROY A STICK SHARK!!!
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THE PISS BUGGY
From TriStar Innovations comes the latest unsanitary cleaning device.
Hosted by Terry Toner and Ken LuVaun(?), the show opens with footage of a woman struggling to scrub a stovetop,
and some very touching film of a woman wearing a gas mask, halfheartedly swiping at a toilet bowl and sitting near a bucket so full of name-brand toxic household
chemicals that it looks like a Superfund site in a diaper pail.
Now we can get right down to business: The Steam Buggy is a large, portable steam generating device that looks a lot like a big canister vacuum cleaner, piss yellow in color, and
missing its wheels. It comes with hoses, an extension wand or two, some brushes & squeegee attachments, and a piece of cloth you stick on the end for floors.
When the first demonstration is conducted, that was enough to make my mind up on this pathetic cleaning gadget:
it clearly shows the steam blasting some goop deeper inside the cracks in the top of an electric range, rather than getting the dirt out.
KODAK MOMENTS:
Aside from the steam jet forcing the dirt deeper into a stove, several other demonstrations were equally effective in convincing me why I should not to buy one of these.
When they show the steamer being used to clean a household air vent, the dirt is shown disappearing INSIDE the vent, rather than running down the wall where it can be wiped away.
They also have a rather gross looking demonstration of how the cleaner gets dried piss out of the cracks in a toilet seat, splattering the yellowish-brown liquid all over
the toilet bowl and rim - and then showing Terry WIPING IT UP WITH HER UNGLOVED HAND afterwards!! What could be ickier?!?
And the smell!!!... steam cleaners don't generate their own perfume or dispense deodorizing agents - so whatever you heat up and blast away will begin to reek
almost immediately. That "pissy toilet smell" is one of the worst - I don't know how they could stand to even film that particularly gross segment.
The Steam Buggy appears to be bulky and unwieldy to use. Without wheels or a handle, you must lug it around on a shoulder strap, and unless you'e used to carrying
objects around in that fashion, it will probably be quite troublesome, at least at first. So how come they didn't put WHEELS on the damn thing? The footage clearly shows
the appliance works fine when you set it on the floor.
At least you could drag the asinine thing around the house by the hose, instead of having to lug it around on your shoulder and risk having it slip off, fall, and explode into hundreds
of little pieces all over your kitchen floor.
The machine also hisses quite loudly when in use. The microphones had no trouble picking up the very loud hiss from the steam nozzle.
YOU WANT MORE SANITATION ISSUES?
The infomercial claims that the Steam Buggy will eliminate the odor of cat piss, but because of its very nature, it will - at least temporarily - make the
dried cat pee stink even worse than it did before! Yucky pee!!
It also claims to kill the odor of cigarettes in couches and on curtains. If you've ever left cigarette stubs in a coffee can outside, you know that coffee can is gonna reek of something awful once water gets in it.
The hotter and moister an odoriferous substance gets (ie. add steam, hello!) the stinkier it will become.
Simple laws of physics and molecular motion at work here.
You want MORE? Fine. Watch a little longer, and see nasty brown crap shoot out of a sink faucet, black crap dribble out of a refrigerator door seal, and black junk splattering all over a bathtub after the Steam Buggy is used on them.
Easily one of the grossest infomercials in current production.
BUT DOES THE STEAM BUGGY WORK?
Judging from one particularly bad demonstration they did with it, it may not work completely as advertised. In one segment, the appliance is shown being used on
a rather filthy oven door, yet when they wiped up the door, a very large area which was not touched at all by any steam wiped clean just as quickly and easily as the treated area did!
They also showed the Steam Buggy "cleaning" the floor, but the cloth cover they put over the end became filthy after swiping about a foot long swatch of flooring - beyond that you'd
just be scrubbing your floor with your own dirt!
The Steam Buggy? How about The Stink Buggy or The Piss Buggy instead?
The machine is piss-yellow, and it will shoot pee everywhere if you use it on your toilet bowl.
Smelly and unsanitary to use, messy to clean up after, the machine itself has all those messy brushes
to wash afterwards (particularly gross if you used any of them in the bathroom), it's probably a pain in the ass to fill & empty - and then there's the hose that'll have
condensation inside and probably start leaking all over the place after you've used the machine for awhile... No thank you, I think I'll stick to Mr. Clean, Comet, and other chemicals in my cleaning bucket -er- my mobile Superfund Site.
Make your house pee free. Buy some Mr. Clean and Comet instead of wasting your money on this smelly, bulky, house-heating and very bothersome to use machine.
Because this is such a gross appliance to use, you get a brand-new rating: ICKY YUCKY THINGS.
Using it can make you vomit, and you'll have to fire it up again to clean up after yourself. YUCK!
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STEAM QUICK
Do you like rip-offs? If you bought this substitute for an iron, you probably don't care anyway.
Steam Quick is a blatant ripoff of the Wonder Steamer, and interestingly enough, the station I'm watching
aired both infomercials back to back this morning.
The Steam Quick is a cheap looking plastic "iron" that's essentially a travel steamer. Without a heating core, it won't burn, melt, or pop ballons.
The infomercial opens with footage (in a misaligned yellow-red "old style") with a woman struggling to use - you guessed it - an iron that's about sixty years old.
Then they cut to the show's host, Bob Circosta, to introduce the steamer and his partner in crime, a woman named Cindy. (Her last name was unintelligble).
KODAK MOMENTS:
If ever there was an award for ripping off another product or the infomercial for that product, Steam Quick would get the blue ribbon for that.
As the program gets underway, they show a "regular" iron neatly sawing through a nice chiffon garment, stinking up the set. Then a child's balloon is popped with it -
and of course, the Steam Quick is harmless to the balloon.
Then the breakage test: Bob holds the steamer about eight feet off the floor and drops it. Unlike the Wonder Steamer though, they openly showed the appliance clattering
across the floor - and they did one more demo: Cindy got up on her high heals and started stomping on it!
Yeah yeah yeah stomp on it!! Break it, break it, break it!!! I hate those things!!
Sadly enough, the Steam Quick came out of this little test with nary a scratch.
In this infomercial, the testimonials - of people who have never even used the product - take place in a clothing store, or possibly
inside a shopping mall. Several people also "phone in" and talk about the Steam Quick during the infomercial.
PLAGIARISM "R" US - More ripped-off elements in this production:
Cindy holds the steaming iron against Bob's arm and it doesn't burn him.
The steamer shuts off when thrown or when laid on its side.
Doesn't leave a beautiful iron-shaped scorch when left cooking on a garment.
Comes with lint rollers in two sizes.
Comes with flimsy, space-saving closet hangers.
Has an unconditional guarantee.
Is compared to a large professional steamer and a pants pressing machine.
6-times faster than an iron.
Demonstration of the velour brush attachment (this time, the brush fits the steamer)
Cindy forces Bob to use an ordinary iron; he burns a hole in a shirt with it.
They harp about how it does both sides at once.
All of these demonstrations were stolen directly from the Wonder Steamer's presentation.
Re-shot on their own videotape perhaps, but stolen nonetheless.
THE HOOK, THE LINE AND THE SINKER:
There seems to be a catch to this product.
When you order the Steam Quick, you are automatically enrolled to a program called
"America's Advantage", which will automatically bill your credit card an additional $72.00 unless you call
them and have it cancelled before 30 days have gone by.
America's Advantage has been running 1 and 2 minute targeted marketing spots for a couple of months now,
but this is the first fully-blown infomercial and also the first time they allow the potential buyer to pay with a check or money order.
One of their other products is a direct rip-off of the Rocket Chef; and they're giving those away "free" if you join this America's Advantage program
and allow them to bill your credit card anywhere between $72 and $96. Not pretty.
Steam Quick. How about Plagiarism Quick instead?
The product is probably OK, but for outright theft you get a big fat snapping busted toilet brush!!!
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THE WONDER STEAMER
Now here's a great product if you love to break things.
This infomercial opens with a brief clip of a woman trying to iron something, purposefully knocking over the starch and sizing canisters and using
an iron that's about sixty years old.
Enter Mel Arthur and a woman named Sandy Bradley; whom he calls "The Queen Of Steam" and "The Ma-Harishi Of Ironing", onto the set.
The producer chose a very odd camera angle for Mel's opening commentary; for it appears as though a jet of steam is shooting out of his right ear
for nearly a full minute, before he moves and you see, set up behind him, one of those laundry steamers you see at the dry cleaners.
Either that, or Mel is extremely pissed off at something until Sandy comes up.
Why do I love this product so much?
Because, they offer an unconditional warranty - if it malfunctions, if it breaks, if YOU break it, if your KIDS break it, if something falls on it, if it gets in an
earthquake, if your pet elephant stomps on it, if you back over it with your hippie bus - if ANYTHING happens to it; just return it with $6.95 for shipping and they'll send you a new one.
This appliance would be perfect for my Pictures Of Broken Things website. I can just keep
breaking Wonder Steamers: dropping bowling balls on them, running over them, stomping
on them, dashing them against the wall, pushing the bookshelf over onto them, flushing them down the toilet and then crunching them up with the toilet snake, melting them in the microwave,
looping them over high-voltage power lines, hitting them with a golf club or baseball bat, running
over them with my quarter-ton motorized wheelchair; and I just send the remains back and keep getting new ones!
And I'll have a virtually endless supply of pictures of broken things for the webpage!
KODAK MOMENTS:
This infomercial's content is pretty routine and expected, but there are a couple of surprises. Mel picks up a steaming Wonder Steamer and drops it on the floor. You can hear
it clatter around underneath the ironing board. He picks it up and it's still steaming. But who's to say he didn't pick up a second Wonder Steamer that had been pre-placed
down there before that scene was shot? He also repeatedly bangs one on its side against a hard surface - again you can hear it dramatically smacking over and over - and of course it still works.
A regular iron would probably survive this treatment however, so long as you didn't strike the tank too sharply.
Mel also lays a "regular" iron onto a shirt in an attempt to leave a burn mark on it. SUCCESS! Within just a moment or two, thick smoke is pouring out from underneath
the iron; and not only did the shirt end up with a nasty, iron-shaped burn on both sides, but even the ironing board was scorched.
If you noticed the iron he used, it was heated so hot that the metal of the soleplate was discolored a bluish-black! Now that's a hot iron... not to mention they conveniently "forgot"
to put water in it. It's no wonder the shirt was ruined so quickly and so thoroughly. He "put the stove on the clothes!"
Speaking of "putting the stove on the clothes", Sandy mentions that all modern irons have a heating coil. Of course they do, that's just how an iron works.
But she says the Wonder Steamer DOESN'T have a heating coil! How can that be? How can a $20 appliance create steam without a coil?!?
I'd like to disassemble and reverse-engineer one to find out just how they do it. I could come up with a new energy source for my wheelchair!
One scene which should have been reshot, shows Sandy attempting to attach the velour nap brush onto the steamer - it fits neatly into one
slot, but not in the other. She steams a velour garment with the Wonder Steamer, the attachment still only partly attached. As she's finishing up this scene,
the camera shows the steamer with the attachment still on it; the next frame shows the steamer without the attachment! It literally disappeared (or fell off) as she
was still speaking and before the next demonstration was to begin. Chalk this one up to "continuity error" on the part of the producer.
Another possible error occurred when they finally get around to the Wonder Steamer that's been left cooking on a silk blouse for the entire show.
I don't at all doubt the blouse will come out of this undamaged, but there SHOULD have been a dark wet spot on the blouse where the steam vent had been hissing away,
if the steamer had indeed been sitting on there for as long as they showed it was.
The only thing I didn't like in this infomercial was during the sales pitch portion - some of the shots were made not with the traditional foggy douche commercial lens filter, but instead
they used some kind of image-splitting filter or a diffraction grating to make it appear foggy and out of focus. Very unprofessional. Use the douche filter next time,
and you'll be guaranteed a winner that's as good as the guarantee you put on the steamer.
The Wonder Steamer. Rock solid guarantee, rock solid rating of 4 1/2 Toilet Seats!
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HOOK 'N HANG
Now here's a brand spanking new infomercial, which just aired for the very first time less than an hour ago. It's so new, that information about it isn't even on the internet yet.
Hook 'n Hang is a product which has been around for awhile, but has only been offered in short, 30 second or 1 minute TV ads; it has
never been enough of a product to justify some stuffed shirts wasting all that money to produce a full-blown infomercial on. That is, until now.
The Product:
Hook 'n Hang is a collection of special retractable hangers which supposedly
increase the space available in your household closet. It does this by having retractable arms that are fitted with holes for regular
coathangers to fit through; when you've hung up to 12 garments on the arms, you simply fold them vertically (they're hinged at the base) and
latch them at the top, so that the arms stay upright. PRESTO! You now have 10 times the closet space. AMAZING!
The Hook 'n Hang hangers are also outfitted with 8 hooks for hanging ties or belts from both the front & back faces of the hanger; and the entire apparatus dangles from your
closet rod on a swivelling hook.
They're also offering Pants Hang and Shoe Hang. Pants Hang has arms to sling multiple pairs of pants over, and also has
clips for hanging skirts, and hooks to hang those dainty little spaghetti-strap numbers on without having to mutilate an ordinary
wire hanger. Its arms also latch vertically like the original Hook 'n Hang's.
Be like Joan Crawford. Stop mutilating wire hangers, with Hook 'N Hang!
Shoe hang is basically an ordinary closet shoe organizer on a hook; however it can also be hung over a door with the included brackets.
Similar products have been produced, but so far, they've all had one major problem: they break when you hang heavier garments on them.
Hook 'n Hang is supposed to have solved this small problem, and enhanced their product into a complete "system" in the process.
The Infomercial:
In this brand new infomercial, two women go about demonstrating how Hook 'n Hang can turn a filthy closet into a pristine, vast open space.
They constantly compare the Hook 'n Hang closet side-by-side with some crappy pigsty that, unfortunately, is far too common a sight in many households today... mine included.
Demonstrations (how many ways can you demonstrate a hanger? include showing what kinds of clothes can be hung, how to
hang them all on a Hook 'n Hang, and a rather unoriginal demonstration with the included "Magic Steamer" (see below).
Interspersed with this are loops of both color and black & white footage of people struggling with regular coathangers and closet organizers;
and the sales pitch very similar to the one they used to use before they had an infomercial produced. They also have "testimonials" from
customers who swear by Hook 'n Hang; but it doesn't say whether or not they were paid to perform on camera this way.
Kodak Moments:
The Hook 'n Hang infomercial is missing one vital component that was used in their regular TV spots: that of the "inferior" plastic multi-hanger
bending and breaking under the weight of several winter coats; dramatically snapping and crumpling to the floor in a heap of ruined fabric & twisted plastic.
These people are offering the "Magic Steamer" as part of the Hook 'n Hang package. This supposedly $30.00 bonus looks suspiciously
like a $9 travel steamer; with a white plastic body and a black painted sheet-metal soleplate with a rectangular steam opening near the front.
The two hosts of this program use the Magic Steamer to perform a blatant rip-off of the Original Iron Quick System with a couple of their demonstrations too!
First, they set an "ordinary" iron and the Magic Steamer flat onto a rather expensive looking blouse, and leave them to cook for awhile.
While the appliances are busily destroying the blouse, one of the hosts takes another ordinary iron and brutally murders a helium party
balloon with it, causing the balloon to instantly (and very loudly) explode in a shower of rubber shards. Naturally, the Magic Steamer
is absolutely harmless to the balloon it is touched to. Then they go back and check in on the blouse: as expected, the "ordinary" iron leaves
a terrible, permanent scorch mark on the garment, while the Magic Steamer leaves it untouched.
Additional footage of an ordinary iron melting the graphic on a T-shirt is also shown during the sales pitch portions of this program,
much like what they did on the Original Iron Quick System's infomercial. They also tell you it cuts your ironing time in half, because
the Magic Steamer does both sides at once. Horse puckey! It's a steamer, not a real iron!
I love new infomercials though, especially now that my TV viewing ability has declined to just 4 channels. So I really get excited when
one of those 4 stations runs a new infomercial.
Hook 'n Hang is by no means a new product, but I did like their infomercial despite the blatant rip-off from another household product's
program. Anybody who likes to see things broken or ruined; or who can identify with the filthy closets shown on this program will find satisfaction with this infomercial.
Hook 'n Hang. 4 Toilet Seats. AMAZING!
Back to Infomercial Quick Click Guide
THE ORIGINAL IRON QUICK SYSTEM
This program starts with some doctored black and white footage of a poor housewife struggling with her ironing. An announcer then comes on,
and starts, "Are you fed up with endless hours of ironing agony? Struggling and straining only to burn, destroy, and
leave wrinkles everywhere? Wish you could do twice the work in only half the time?
Well now you can!!! Introducing 'The Original Iron Quick System' from Quantum Homewares..."
Now the REAL fun begins. Show host Audrey Watson ("Auntie Audrey") and cohort Joe Farago set immediately to work, starting
by using the Original Iron Quick System on some blue jeans and several other assorted garments.
The "system" they're using is a cheap looking plastic thingie that attaches to the bottom of your iron, and a self-adhesive sheet of material
that replaces your traditional ironing board cover.
What makes THIS infomercial fun to watch though, is all of the senseless destruction that occurs on the set.
Ironing boards are deliberately pushed over, irons are violently thrown into garbage cans, or fall to the floor and smash to pieces.
A number of garments are burned or melted by "forgotten" irons left burning on them, one garment is soiled with yellow mustard
in a demonstration of the new ironing board cover; and assorted other ironing mishaps occur.
The program appears to have been rather quickly thrown together, and a number of obvious production errors occur. But all of that destruction is what makes this
program so entertaining.
Kodak Moments:
Auntie Audrey demonstrates to the audience how easy it is to clean the new Iron Quick Reflector Board Cover, by smearing mustard
on both a traditional ironing board cover, and on the Iron Quick's cover. She takes a sponge, and very half-heartedly tries to wipe the mustard off the old ironing board cover.
With the cover still besmudged with mustard, Audrey proceeds to dramatically stain a perfectly shirt; yanking it over the soiled board and violently slamming the iron onto the shirt and forcibly pressing the mustard right into it.
Of course, the mustard "easily" cleans up from the Iron Quick's board cover, and consequently, the shirt ironed on it does not end
up with a permanent mustard mark.
In another segment, she demonstrates how easy it is to break an iron, by pushing the ironing board
over (with a certain dramatic flair, no less); exclaiming at the inevitable: "...When you stand up the iron like THIS...The CHILDREN come by,
they KNOCK the board Joe (CRASH!!!) and look! The iron FALLS to the floor, it SMASHES to pieces;
FIFTY DOLLARS JOE, for a new iron!!!"
A very shocking demonstration occurs when Auntie Audrey pulls a shirt over the end of an obviously doctored ironing board, causing the cover
to bunch up under the garment. She then dramatically slams the iron down onto the whole lumpy mess, and irons the wrinkles right into the shirt.
And yet another horrifying example of destruction occurs when the "poor housewife" becomes fed up toiling with her old iron and board
cover, viciously slamming them into a pre-positioned garbage can tightly bolted to the floor in front of her ironing board.
As an exciting finish to this infomercial, they stage a "race" at a "local laundromat" between two women: one using a "regular" iron and ironing board cover; the
other using The Original Iron Quick System. It's a given as to who "wins" this race, obviously.
HINT: it's NOT the woman using the regular ironing board cover and an "expensive $100 iron".
Special Observations:
Joe Farago seems absolutely FASCINATED by all aspects of ironing. At times, he even tilts his head like a puppy that didn't understand what had just been spoken to it.
When Auntie Audrey is demonstrating a space-saving clothes hanger, Joe cocks his head all funny and stares at it as if he'd never in his life seen a hanger before.
He also cringes in terror as Audrey pops a balloon with a hot iron. Duh! As if he never expected the balloon to explode when touched
with a five hundred degree chunk of metal!
Several "slip-ups" occurred; which would have been better edited out and re-took. But I suppose, these were probably deliberately placed in there to simulate
a "live" program as best they could. Everybody in the audience reacted with such shock and disbelief, they HAVE to all be "plants".
The only real turn-off in this program? It's that canned laughter and canned "audience reactions". Although the entire audience as photographed
is all-female, the laugh tracks contain an awful lot of GUY'S laughter. And there's an obvious misspelling that occurs about 1 minute before the end of the program.
Earlier versions of this program featured "The Iron Quick Safety Cradle"; a flimsy plastic device that clamps onto the end of your ironing board and supposedly prevents
your iron from smashing to the floor, and for keeping the iron's cord out of the way while ironing. Auntie Audrey's very theatrical demonstration of how the cord gets in the way was as entertaining as it was silly.
It's a shame that this crucial piece of plastic is no longer sold with the package; apparently Quantum Homewares was sued by someone who tried Auntie's "kick over the ironing board and
watch my iron smash into pieces all over the floor" demonstration at home.
The current Iron Quick commercial makes a feeble attempt to electronically "mask out" the offending plastic Safety Cradle from
any static image that contains it; rather than simply re-shooting these portions. Also, the bouncy music that played during the ironing race is gone in the new version.
Shame on them for doing that.
Still, this infomercial is NUMBER ONE in my library... I've even got it on video tape - the original version no less, with all those irons, ironing board covers, and clothes being destroyed!
MY RATING: Five (5) Toilet Seats
Back to Infomercial Quick Click Guide
THE PVA-10X
Another gem hosted by Mick Hasting, supposed "homewares expert".
This commercial, for a forty dollar household mop, takes place at the Seaworld park in the San Francisco bay area.
This is yet another program that opens with doctored black and white footage of a housewife struggling with a common
household chore. It then quickly transforms into the brightly-colored, fast moving infomercial that everyone's seen:
The revolutionary new PVA-10X.
A live audience is again present; and close-ups of the audience are used frequently after they become grossed-out at some of the material Mick Hasting, Joe Farago,
and a female co-host have to mop up throughout the duration of this 25-minute amphetamine-laced cleaning orgy.
About the only good part of this commercial, is the funny, oh-so-phoney way in which the "ordinary" mops are tried, next to the
PVA-10X. A can of cola is dumped onto a pre-mounted section of kitchen flooring material; and Mick's guests are encouraged to
try cleaning the mess up with ordinary mops; and then cleaning up the same kind of mess with the PVA-10X.
This infomercial attempts to sell you this mop by grossing you out with ordinary mops; espousing the benefits of how it wrings out
so nicely while ordinary mops just shove the rotting garbage and germs deeper into their mophead, causing them to start to rot & smell in a day or two.
The next test involves a mixture of soda pop, Hershey's syrup, black pepper, and ketchup. The audience is thoroughly grossed-out
during this demonstration, and the camera spares no expense in getting close-ups of some of their reactions.
Ordinary mops are wrung out, shoving the ugly mess deeper inside of them; while the PVA-10X appears to rinse clean with a single
push of its "One Finger Wringer" lever.
The infomercial's grand finale is a "contest" at cleaning a pair of extremely gross "kitchen" stage props; with one housewife using ONLY a PVA-10X,
and the other one armed with a huge load of "traditional" cleaning supplies: mop, bucket, kitchen towels, Formula 409, Windex, etc., etc., etc.
Obviously, the PVA-10X woman wins by a landslide.
One particularly gross segment shows how "ordinary" mops rot, stink, and breed germs. The photographs of the blackened, decomposing and
rotting mops are just disgusting; and how they tell you that if you mop with a regular mop you're just mopping your floors with your own garbage is equally nauseating.
Just f**king disgusting.
All in all though, this commercial isn't that bad, compared to a lot of the others out there. It's no more, or no less phoney; and the mop might even be
superior to some other kinds of kitchen mops. But I would wait until the price comes down a little closer to that of a normal throw-away
mop before buying a PVA-10X.
MY RATING: Two and a half Toilet Seats and a YUCK!!!
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QUICK 'N' BRITE
Now here's a cleaning product for the neat freak of the house.
Quick 'N' Brite is a Seattle-based small business, who made the mistake of having an infomercial produced.
This product claims to replace ALL store-bought cleaners. Not an easy accomplishment.
This infomercial really isn't that bad, if you like watching some guy scrubbing soap scum off a shower door or washing a barbecue. And REALLY, that's pretty much all there is to it.
Kodak Moments:
The man who's selling this product tells you it replaces all other products - and he rubs it in by listlessly pushing a shopping cart
through the aisles of a supermarket, loading it with all manner of cleaning supplies: laundry spot remover, shower scum remover,
floor cleaner, window cleaner, bowl cleaner, and on, and on, and on. He doesn't stop until his cart is a rolling Superfund site; loaded with several
hundred dollars worth of toxic, name-brand household chemicals.
Being somewhat of a sadist, I really enjoyed watching someone ELSE doing the scrubbing for a change.
Filthy range hoods, toilet seats, grungy sinks, and mildewed shower tile all came to life with this product.
So did encrustulated barbecue grills, outdoor surfaces, and the laundry.
This commercial uses a lot of one-time-use footage (unlike the Golf Pro In A Bottle program), and hence, really never gets
all that boring. The man doing all of the cleaning never gets dirty & dishevelled himself - typical of the showmanship of sales.
He does make a big deal of how much product you get for your money though; and among other things,
he gives ordinary 50 cent plastic spray bottles some hoity-toity expensive sounding name, and calling them "special".
I just don't have all that much nasty to say about this infomercial. It's fast moving, mildly entertaining, and fun for the whole family.
How special.
Another short review; but a better rating than the last one-screen wonder did: three and a half Toilet Seats!
If you enjoy watching others toil over the housework, this one is for you.
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OXI-CLEAN
Now THIS is your cup of tea, if you enjoy people doing their housework while madder than piss ants.
Oxi-Clean is a product that instantly turns everything white. It will turn your ears white too, unless you stick some of
those cheap foam thingies deep inside your ear canals before watching it.
Why this guy seems so hyper and pissed off, one may never know. But he's the guy who screams his head off while
douching out a toilet bowl; and is even louder when he tries to clean out a shower with his Oxi-Clean.
There's no doubt you've come across this fartknocker while tuning across late-night TV - perhaps looking for the nice lady
who sells an ironing board cover, or that sweet gentleman who sells a glass-front rotisserie.
When I clean a shitbowl, I hold the shitbowl brush in one hand, then dump in some 59 cent bleach with the other.
Then I light up a cigarette, and casually swab out the shitbowl with the shitbowl brush.
THIS guy is a holy terror when it comes to cleaning the toilet. He's sweating and screaming, while trying to dump some Oxi-Clean into
the shitbowl when the camera is not looking - then madly swabbing out the shitbowl like an amphetamine-crazed junkie searching for a used
syringe after breaking out of his hospital restraints.
He's even worse with the shower, the tile, the grout, the barbecue, and a bunch of soiled & dye-stained clothes.
This guy just can't stop sweating and screaming!
For his laundry demonstrations, he throws a whole bunch of terrible looking dyes into the water, throws in some clothes, then throws
in some of his cleaner. The water and the clothes instantly turn the color of badly-diluted skim milk.
I only wonder if this product will work on this guy's own clothes. Even before this commercial's really underway, he's already a gross, sweaty mess.
Apparently, they don't believe in air conditioning on the various sets; they're using a whole bunch of really big light bulbs mounted way too close to him for the shooting...
OR, this guy is addicted to smack and crank and can't find his paraphernalia..
He belongs in Pioneer Square with the other junkies, not on national television.
If brains were gasoline, this guy doesn't have enough to drive a piss ant's motorcycle around the inside of a Cheerio.
The "annoyance meter" goes all the way to the top here. Unless you're one of those lethargic couch potatoes who couldn't
give a rat's ass as to what was on, this commercial will probably have you climbing the walls after just five or ten minutes.
With fresh footprints now besmudging your walls, you won't have any choice but to order some Oxi-Clean to take them off.
Short review - another one-seat wonder. Unfortunately, I do give a rat's ass! Great product; just ghastly salesmanship here. He's worse then the guy who smashes washing machines and TVs.
Ten pounds of sh!t in a nine-pound bag.
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The Euro-Pro Bagless Stick Shark