Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio, and.
Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chalk and Jerry's here too, and it's time to buckle down and get serious about some silly inventions that turned out to be pretty popular.
Yeah, man, this takes me right back.
It does, because this is a super kind of eighties. But I really associate most of this with the nineties, don't you.
Oh, I just mean this episode takes me back to like twenty twelve.
Oh gotcha? But yeah, sure, yeah, Well, this article is clearly written around two thousand and nine or twenty ten by our esteemed colleague Jonathan Strickland esteemed. Oh yeah, there's loads of esteem going his way from us. We're talking today about some silly inventions. Typically they were what you would call direct response TV marketed types of inventions or products, right, which are what those like the little thing, at least in the United States, that little red icon that says
as seen on TV mm hmm. Those are basically across the board direct response TV marketed.
Products, that's right. And by direct response that basically means we want to make more money, and we'll do that by making like an infomercial, and instead of the infomercial saying like and now go to your store and buy this thing, even though a lot of the stuff you could find in drug stores and like maybe a bed, bathroom beyond or something like that. Sure, but generally what they were trying to do was sell direct to you get a direct response by putting like an eight hundred
number up you could call an order. So that just means they get more juice for themselves since they're not having to sell it to a store.
Yeah, and often it's like, yes, of course they wanted more profit, but they also wanted to be able to pay off the third mortgage they took out on their house to get this invention of theirs out.
Yeah, maybe public.
You know, there's a lot of these that were just invented by some person. You know, it's a good idea, and luckily for them, they took off and became super popular. So there's one that it wouldn't qualify in any really way, shape or form as a silly invention, so we didn't include it on this list. But it is the most the greatest selling direct response TV marketed product of all time,
far and away, and it's the George Foreman grill. From what I saw in the last like twenty plus years, more like thirty years, I think it sold about a billion dollars worth of product. That is pretty significant. I don't know if you're counting, but a billion dollars still means a lot these days.
It does. I never had a Forman grill. I never owned one, but I lived with one for a year.
Oh yeah. Did it pay a share of the rent?
Yeah? No, I think one of my roommates had one year, I feel like in college. And you know, if you don't know what those words, the whole trick is. It's like any kind of standard Panini press or something, except they raised up one side of it so Greece could trickle out of it. And that was about the only difference, I think, right.
Yeah, But the thing is it really works. You mean, and I have one and we use it basically anytime we cook burgers, we use it. And I mean, like there's no loss of taste, but there's a ton of like fat that's just just strips right out. So we use ours pretty frequently.
That's funny. I don't think I knew that you guys had a Foreman.
We do. And one other thing about this too. This is another thing too with direct response products. Most people think George Foreman invented that grill because he refers to it in the ads as his grill. He did not. It was already an existing product and he was approached to basically be the pitch man for it, and very wisely he said, sure, I'll do it, but you have to give me forty five percent of the profits.
Yeah. He made a lot of money on miss things.
Just crazy gobs of money. Good for him, And there's a similar So moving into our list now, Chuck, and this is in very much stuff you should know tradition. Not a top ten, a not a full ten top ten list, I guess is what we call this kind of thing.
Yeah. I don't know that we've ever done ten, and we're never gonna.
We better not. If we did. At some point we need to find that episode and go edit out one of them.
Yeah, or maybe that's like our very last episode will be a true ten.
Oh yeah, that's a good one.
That'll be the tell everyone will know we could.
Do a top ten of our top ten episodes.
Yeah, that sounds it sounds like a great way to finish.
Actually, so the segue I guess from George Foreman to the first on our list is the idea that people tended to think Suzanne Summers may have invented the thigh Master. She did not. Just like George Foreman, she was approached to become the pitch person for an existing invention, and she thanked her lucky stars all the way to the bank later on that she agreed to it.
That's right. If you have a certain age, you may not even know who Susanne Summers is, or you may know her as the thigh Master lady. If you're a little bit older, if you're in our generation and above, you know her as Chrissy from the great She's Raids the Sheriff Sitcom threes Company.
Oh Three's Company.
Yeah, yeah, great show.
She was also and she She's the Sheriff. Though, that was a good one.
I didn't I've never even heard of that show.
It was the kind of show that would come on at three point thirty pm Saturday, right after reruns of Mama's Family.
Yeah, I've really never heard of She's the shaff I take it to the Sheriff.
She was the sheriff. Okay, it was a good show. But yes, of course Three's Company Chrissy is who she is vastly far and away better known for. But by that I mean that was like the late seventies, early
eighties when she left Three's Company. Apparently she was making one hundred and twenty grand less an episode than Jack John Ritter, so she's like, I'm out of here, and there was kind of a lull in her career between then and I guess nineteen ninety one when she came back with a vengeance on TV pitching this thigh master.
Yeah, pitching the v bar. That's what it was originally called when a Swedish physical therapist named doctor Anne Marie Binstrom invented this thing in the sixties. But they tweaked it a little bit. They made it look cooler, they made it a little more colorful, and brought it into the eighties slash early nineties and approached her to like you said, like, hey, you know, you're a very recognizable
face and you're into fitness and you're smart lady. She played a dingbat on Three's Company, But Suzanne Summers is a very smart woman. Yeah, as evidenced by the perhaps three hundred million dollars she made on Howkin the thigh Master and eventually like buying out the partners to where she outright owned it.
That's awesome. So you said that this is an existing device, right, the V bar? Yes, So what it was we should just say real quick, the thigh master or the V bar was this kind of device? What would you liken it too? You know those like paper chip clips?
Yeah, I'm just ready for you to confuse everybody.
Go ahead, Okay, it's like a giant paper chip clip, but it doesn't open up, so you couldn't clip it to anything. It's just the squeezing part. So go to your kitchen right now, get a paper chip clip, break off the part that opens up, and then put the little remaining part that's like a V the V bar between your legs and squeeze. And what you're doing is using a mini thigh master right now.
That's right. You do the same thing with your fingers if you wanted to.
Right. So, they made it pop and like they hid the spring in the middle, and they gave it some great coloring. And this was now the thigh Master that Suzanne Summers was now demonstrating on some very famous TV ads again starting in nineteen ninety one.
That's right, And I guess the only other thing we should mention is that there was a physician on a lot of these commercials. There was a guy wearing a lab coat, doctor Herbert L. Gould, who was there to recommend the thing and saying that he uses it. And the cherry on top is that doctor Gould was an ophthalmologist. Is great, not that that doesn't you know, I mean, still a doctor still used the thing, I guess for sure.
Yeah, it's not illegitimate, it's just funny.
Clearly knew Suzanne Summer somehow, probably.
Or they just started picking doctor at random.
Now I think he was probably her optomologist, be my guess.
Yeah, you're probably right. I feel like there is one more thing we should mention about the ad, and that is the fact that Suzanne Summers appeared in it wearing leotard like you would think for working out, but also panteos and high heels, which is the specific kind of.
Look yeah, oh, actually, there is one more thing, because this is we buried the lead. The probably the most interesting thing about all of this is that there is a direct response Hall of Fame and she's in it.
Yep. She was inducted in twenty fourteen and rightly so amazing. Take an early break or move on? No, we got to move on, Okay, so I say we move on to the pocket Fishermen and a little bit of a bio on rom Po Peel, one of the great salesmen of all time.
Oh yeah, Ron papill. If you had a TV in the nineteen eighties and nineties and you have seen this, dude, he was the guy that you know. But wait, there's more that came from him. He originated that term. He was popular in the I guess even the like the fifties and early sixties when he made the first infomercial for the vegematic. Yeah it's vices, it dices like that was Ron Papeel. All these sort of tropes of infomercials, a lot of them come from the great Ron Papel.
Yeah, that vegematic infomercial that was like the world's first one. So yes, he was an infomercial god. And he got his start. He was always good at selling things. Apparently, by the time he was sixteen, he was selling his dad's inventions at flea markets and grossing about five hundred bucks a day, and that's in nineteen fifty one dollars, so that's like ten million dollars a day today. And within just a few years he was a household name
thanks to television. And it was largely built on that vegematic that apparently his dad invented.
Yeah, it was you know, it's a veggie chopper.
Yeah, manual food processor, that's it. But because he was he could get so excited about any wacky, weird invention and try to make you excited about it, and there was just no ignoring this guy.
Yeah, he had the enshll egg scrambler, and that was a device where if you didn't want to crack your egg put it in a bowl and scramble it, you could use this little device that had a little bent pin that went inside the eggshell and spun around. Very interesting invention. And the GLH which stood for Great Looking Hair, the g LH Formula number nine hair system, which is basically spray paint for bald spots.
Yeah, it was like aerosol spray hair like product or something like that.
Remember when Rudy Giuliani sweated his sweated that stuff down the side of his face.
Yeah, I do.
It's amazing. It was like, what a time when he was on TV in front of like sweating what looked like shoe polish, and then standing in.
Front of that huh for landscape.
Oh my god, what a time to be alive. Amazing. It was like SNL come to life.
It really moment after moment too, something new.
Yeah.
That Inside the Eggshell Scrambler too. By the way. So one of the other things about all these products are their ads are magnificent. Sometimes they're magnificently terrible or just so absurd or just unintentionally salacious. But this Inside the Eggshell Scrambler ad had a little kid sitting at a table and he had been served like runny eggs, and it's the TV announcer says, no more runny eggs, and the kid looks at his plate and kind of gags a little bit.
Good lord, I love runny eggs.
Well this didn't, and apparently neither did Ron Pop Peel because he used it as a selling point.
Well, his company, because he was Ron, was called Ronco. They've done a couple of billion in sales over the year, and part of that chunk is owed to the pocket Fisherman which is the one on the list here, and that's you can still get a pocket fisherman. It is a is exactly what it sounds like. It's a compact fishing rod that folds up very small. It has a little compartment in the handle to hold some stuff, and it's you know the problem with the pocket fishermen like
it works. If you go on YouTube, there are plenty of examples of people using this thing and catching like a decent sized fish. Even it's just not I think you had in here. Maybe it was strickling. It said, it solves the problem that we didn't know existed, And that's kind of true, because you know, if you're going camping, let's say, or backpacking, and you pack up and break down a regular sized fishing rod, it straps on the outside of your backpack, no problem, and it's not really
that big or in the way. So the pocket fisherman just took it a little further, I.
Guess, yeah, and made it chunkier.
Yeah. They're cool looking.
Yeah, they look vaguely like a staple gun. Oh okay, that you break off the handle from and put between your legs and squeeze staples into your the insides of your thighs. That's what its like.
I think we should definitely take that break now, Okay, all right, we'll be right back with a few more right after this. All right, we're back, everybody. And next on the list, we have the shake weight, which is a you know, a semi legitimate piece of workout equipment. It's kind of like a dumbell if you picture a dumbell, but instead of just lifting the dumbbell, you put both hands on it and move it. And there's a spring in the middle and the two ends of the dumbbell
like move like when you shake it. A shake weight, that's what it is. But it became popular not because of it's how well it worked or how good of a piece of gear it was. It became popular because of the clearly obvious sexual innuendo that comes about while operating.
Yeah, we don't really need to explain it. Just go look at a shakewaight, ad, and you'll immediately understand what we're talking about. Yeah. The thing is, though, Chuck, is it does seem to have worked right, Like you're basically instead of you moving, the weight is moving, and what you're trying to do is stabilize it and what the shake weight makers were saying is like, hey man, this
requires way more muscle exertion than traditional dumbbell lifting. And they commissioned some studies that basically said, yeah, this actually is is correct. Use something more like three hundred percent more muscle activity than you do with traditional dumbbells, and in like one sixth of the time too. And plus I think they had a two and a half pound version that was for women apparently, and then one that
was double the weight for men. And the two and a half pound version burned as many calories as a twelve pound dumbbell. So all of this checked out. But again that's not really what people were buying the shake weight for.
No, it was parodied sort of all over the place, obviously on stuff like SNL Ellen DeGeneres, and you know, it's just one of those funny things that hit like virally early on because of how it looked when you used it. You know, I imagine it was a pretty decent cardio workout. I don't think I've ever seen one in person. Are touched one?
I don't believe I have either.
I lived with one for a while.
Did you know it was? It was a mean drunk.
Yeah, I wonder if these things had if they were like in actual gems.
I don't know, Like this is one of the things like when it comes to exercise equipment, like the thigh Master two. The Shakewaight was like there was article after article like it doesn't really work, it actually works, And from what I saw, the consensus seemed to be that it definitely did give you a workout, like you could feel it, but it for as far as strength training, which is what most people use dumbbells for, it wasn't going to help you very much for that.
Yeah, probably pretty good cardio though, like I said, and I imagine it was a pretty decent four arm workout, you.
Know, right exactly. But yes, I'm sure most people wouldn't have been caught dead at the gym using one of those things. All right, Well that was the Shakeway. Oh one other thing I saw that in one year, I think this was two thousand and ten, they made something like forty million dollars off of it.
Man, these things it's crazy.
Yeah, it is pretty impressive. So what's up next, Charles?
Well, we got to go with big mouth. I couldn't even say it, right, almost, said Billy big mouth. But that's just what I called mine. Big mouth. Billy Bass took the world by storm in the early two thousands. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, it is if you've ever seen a taxidermied fish mounted on a plaque on the wall like a big largemouth bass, imagine if that thing came to life and saying don't worry, be happy to you.
Yeah, this thing had a real evil dead vibe to it.
Yeah, I think so. Take Me to the River was the other one of the two original or not original songs, but you know what I mean, the first songs that the Billy Bass played, right.
And this is in two thousand, when Billy Bass Spentett's year in the limelight. But the story goes back a couple of years earlier and the inventor, Joe Peltieri, and his wife Barbara, were out on a road trip. Joe was looking for the next big idea. He was a VP at a novelty company and he was trying to figure out, you know, what to do. I think he had kind of hit a dry patch and was a
little concerned. And they ended up at a bass pro shop on the road trip and his wife, Barbara, knowing that he was trying to come up with a new idea, said why not a mounted fish that sings? And Joe said, Barbara, I could kiss you and she says, well, what are you waiting for? And they kissed.
I wonder how that went down. Was she literally walking around a bass pro shop and saw a taxa dermat fish and said, wouldn't it be great if that thing sang don't worry to be happy?
That's that's how I envision it.
Just what a while? I mean, was she on Paoti?
I don't know. Yeah, maybe she didn't even think of it. She saw it, you know.
Yeah, it's such a weird thing to conjure up, but I love it and it was a very very fun product, Like out of all these, to me, this is the most kind of fun thing that you might want to have on your wall.
Yeah, and I think it's great. They went with don't worry be happy to take me to the river. You understand that's pretty funny, but don't worry be happy. That was like the smash It of nineteen eighty eight, Like it had been dead and gone for over a decade, and they brought that thing back with big mouth billy bass.
Yes, hard to get that out in it.
Yeah, it is. So.
The thing was actually, for what it was was a fairly sophisticated piece of gear. They had a censor inside of it so when you walk by it, it would pick up on that and just automatically start singing. And he had some designs that he did over the years that he didn't love, but he really hit on it when I guess his wife Barbara probably said well, why don't you have the thing turn its head out and sort of look at the person they're serenading, And he was like, by god, Barbara, we've got a kiss.
Again, right, And that was a big deal like that, Like you did not see things that did that, that turned away from the plaque and looked at you to sing. That put the novel in novelty for big mouth billy bass, if you ask me.
Yeah. So, like I was saying, though, it was a pretty sophisticated thing the way it all worked. And for twenty nine ninety five, you know, they took a long time to build. It wasn't cheap. It was a well made piece of gear. It was forty days to build one. So I think Jimmy G. E. M. M. Y was the company that which still owns the big Mouth Billy Bass that he was working for. But they didn't know it was going to be such a big deal. So and like I said, because it took so long to make,
they ended up shorthanded. And these things were going on eBay for like three times the amount.
Yeah, and I mean twenty nine ninety five in two thousand was about fifty seven dollars today for a latex singing fish essentially. But it just it hit just right and it became like basically the big thing in two thousand in the United States, and in very short order, competitors came out and knockoffs came out, and then they showed up with different songs too. I Will Survive, Stay in Alive YMCA.
Of course this was.
During a disco revival, if you'll remember correctly. And I found I didn't send this to you, I don't think. But the Royal Palm shuffle Board Club, the Chicago location along one wall, they have more than seventy big mouth Billy.
Bass Wow Nightmare Fuel that.
They have choreographed, not even to do to sing in unison like one will sing the main part and the others will turn and like sing the chorus and stuff like that, but they sing Staying Alive. They sing talking Heads once in a lifetime, and then they sing Choices by E forty. So it's really something to see if you go look up the video.
Wow, I gotta check that out. That took some pretty brilliant wiring, I imagine.
I can't. I think it is just timing. I don't know how they did it, but it's really impressive. But yeah, it is a little haunting for sure, because they have dead eyes. I never really thought about it before. But that's the thing. One of the things that makes it so absurd is the fish looks dead still, you know what I mean. They didn't try to make it look alive. It looks like a dead mounted fish come to life or come to reanimation, singing to you.
I never really thought about that.
I didn't either until just the second Chuck Well, he sold.
About one hundred million dollars worth of these things. It was popular for about a year, which is all you need really, and they don't even advertise their products, so this was all word of mouth, like somebody would see it in someone's house, and you know, in the bathroom. They would go to use a bathroom and this bass would start singing to them, and before you know it, they're buying four of them to give to their friends and so on and so on. And they don't realized
when they buy it. Though, as you know, that motion sensor worked pretty well, and so you got sick of it pretty quickly.
I think, yeah, for sure, in America as a whole got sick of it pretty quickly. So, like you said, a year is pretty much all you need and we moved on. But not before like it appeared in all sorts of different TV shows, and like it was parodied too, and I think it played a role in an episode of Murder. She wrote. Nope, it was on Sopranos, though there was a like a at least one episode where it showed up and it was kind of like a mcguffin.
Maybe, Oh God, can we move on to the be Dazzler. Yes, this was a big deal. This was a came from a guy named Herman Brickman who was a protege of ron Papel, and he invented it in the late seventies and it was called the stud Setter, the Ronco rhinestone at first, and you know, it was like kids used it some of the eighties, But in the nineties it became a really big deal because people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spear. It became like a fashion thing because
people would be dazzle. Like there's a lot of denim, like denim jackets and jeans and stuff like that.
Just to kind of get across what you're doing here. This is pretty involved. But you take say a pair of jeans, maybe around the pocket, and you slide that bit of fabric in between the backstop, the bottom of the thing, the base of the thing, and the plunger, and under the plunger you put a setter and the rhyinestone. You plunge it down and all of a sudden, you've just bedazzled your genes. Well you yeah, you've put one bedazzle onto your jeans and you have a lot of work ahead of you.
Yeah. I think you need to put at least five things for it to truly bedazzle.
That seems like the minimum.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, it looks kind of like a stapler and Mental Floss. You've got some stuff from Mental Floss on this one. And apparently Ron Pappeel at one point, as a selling point, said it can make an eight dollars pair of jeans worth up to fifty dollars.
The thing that kills me from that is worse up to fifty.
Dollars, Like, are you gonna get sell them or something?
Yeah, I guess so, I think that's what he was suggesting.
I think people did that actually.
Yeah. So it's identified as a Y two K fashion trend that came from millennium optimism. I don't remember optimism of the millennium to you, I remember like fear in dread.
Hmm uh, I don't remember. I remember the fear in dread about the Y two K bug. But maybe after that there was optimism because we were now like living in the future or something. I don't know, I don't remember.
Maybe maybe I'll.
Pretty out of it at the time for sure.
But well, I'm talking more about like the whole X Files zeitgeist. You know, it was a lot really paranoid and just kind of dark. I don't know. I always think of it as like a people were just kind of worried on a really unconscious level about what was going to happen. That's just you buddy, Yeah, maybe it was. So it's made a comeback chuck. If you go on to TikTok or Instagram and you say bedazzle in the little search bar, I'll bring up like little videos of
people bedazzling stuff. They don't use the bedazzler machine anymore because you can. I think people still bedazzle clothes here there, but this is more like the current trend is more about like bedazzling objects instead.
Yeah, I've definitely seen bedazzleed cell phone cases and stuff like that. Uh, and I know that. I guess you've seen vasoline jarsdests where you see these.
I saw it on man, I can't remember where I saw it, but somebody took a little mini vasoline brand vasiline petroleum jelly jar just redid the whole thing in different colored rhinestones and it looks like a it's a bedazzled vasiline jar. It's pretty impressive.
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you need, if you need to grease yourself up, you might as well have on doing it.
And so the thing is, though, it is like, since you can't use the bedazzling machine, you're just kind of like kind of tediously like applying one after the other with an adhesive. It's not the whole satisfying plunge of applying them. So it's a little more of a craft these days, like a kind of a meditative, tedious craft, as opposed to like the whole rock and roll ethos of the original Bedazzler that was in the nineties.
Yeah, it's like the origami of you know, blingy crafts.
All right, Chuck, we're down to our last two, if you can believe it or not. I think we're gonna end up doing eight total, because remember we're not including the form and grill. That's not silly, and it was the intro. Everybody, don't get confused here.
Yeah, well, I guess we need to take the break then.
Oh boy, thank you for thinking of that, because Jerry would have killed us.
All right, we'll be back right after this with Oh boy, I'm not even gonna say, you just gotta wait and see.
Okay, Chuck, we're back, and you wouldn't say what was coming up next. You left it to me, So I'll just tell everybody we're about to go dive into the flow bee.
Yeah, what episode did we talk about the flow bee? On?
Doesn't ring? A bell.
We've talked about it at some point, because I remember mentioning that we almost bought one in our college house late, you know, kind of late night one night, like you do. You're up late doing god knows what, and you see the infomercial come on, and you're all like, we should get one of those and cut each other's hair. But then, true college passion, no one ever follows up on that and does it.
Yep. That's because no one had a credit card that they were willing to bust out.
Yeah, that's true. I had that college MX.
That's uh. Yeah, I had college Capital one. Huh that that's uh. That's how it works. Though, like those late night commercials, essentially, I would guess probably fifty sixty percent of sales of all these products come from people ordering them while they're drunk. Yeah, probably, So it's got to be like that explains quite a bit of it. So the flow bee this is like a humble, legitimate invention. Oh, by the way, we must have talked about it in
our how Vacuum Attachments Work episode? Yeah that was but this guy, this was invented by a guy named Rick Haunts, who I saw the original infomercial for this, and he said that he was dissatisfied with the haircuts he was getting and that they grew out too fast, and wouldn't it be great if he could keep up with it himself. And he wasn't in the salon hairstyle industry, he wasn't in the vacuum industry. He was a carpenter who owned a cabinatry company out in California. So he was a
California cabinet carpenter. That would have been better if all of it had rolled off the ton. And his name was Rick Hunts. I don't know if I said that or not.
Yeah, just a humble carpenter, much like Jesus and Harrison Ford. So he gives up. He believes in this thing so much he gives up his carpentry business. He sells it, in fact, to help fund it. Went around to county fairs demonstrating this thing. He called it the vacuum cut at first, but eventually renamed it the flow bee because it makes like a buzzing sound, like a bee. And
he colored it thustly. It was like a yellow and black and it's you know, if you don't know what this thing is, it attaches to a vacuum cleaner, and so you got to have one of those, of course, and it engages the vacuum and pulls your hair into a you know, they have these like recessed hair trimmers blades in there, and they had different attachments to cut it at different links. So it just sucking your hair.
So you know, I saw a guy went on YouTube today to see it demonstrated in modern times, and I guess this is during COVID because the guy was like, Hey, these are great things to have around right now during COVID. Yeah, and yeah, you just sort of suck some up and then push it back down and pull it out and push it down all over your hair evenly, and it supposedly does a decent job of cutting your hair.
Yeah, So you know when you go to you know, Great Clips or Van Michael or something like that, the hairstylist will put their fingers through your hair and pull up and put tension on your hair to make it easier to cut. That's what the vacuum suction does to your hair. So that means that you don't need to have somebody with extra hands to cut your hair. Technically, you can do yourself. This thing you just run over
your head. And that was always essentially the big selling point for the flow be is well two of them. One you can cut your hair anytime you want. Well three two you're gonna save a ton of money. The flow he's gonna pay for itself in a couple of months, depending outside of your family. And then three no clippings to pick up because it all gets sucked right into your shop back.
No muss, no fuss. Uh. The problem for me is I love getting a haircut.
Oh me too. I get to go hang out with my buddy Michael, who does my hair.
I get to hang out with my friend Robin, and uh, it's always good. It's fun, it's a it's it's sort of like I don't do spa treatments much, so this is sort of like a spa treatment for me. Get my hair washed by somebody. It's the best.
Yeah, it is nice. Do you get a hot towel and like a little lavender essential oil?
Uh no, she doesn't do like it's not like one of those men's barbershops where they offer you a whiskey and no, no in the hotael treatment. But she does a great job.
Yeah, No, neither's mine. It's a salon for sure. Uh so, uh let's see. Oh so I wanted to say also, one of the reasons the flow gets to me is Rick Kant's like he was kind of the person I was referencing at the beginning, where like he really I think you might have said he sold his cabinetry business to fund this, and he started pounding the pavement. He's like, I've got a great idea here and I've got to just get it out there. He went to Nialko, he
went to con Air, he went to Remington. I saw there was a great article on mental floss that really kind of covered the flowbee. But he was getting nowhere. He went to salons, and salons are like, no, we don't want to sell this. It's going to cut into our business. So he did what most great silly inventors have done. He took it directly to the consumer. He
created a direct response infomercial. He ponied up thirty thousand dollars of his own money to produce a thirty minute infomercial and it first aired in nineteen eighty eight, and the premise of it is it's a fake show. The
show is new products and ideas which doesn't exist. It was just for the show and it was hosted by Lenny mcgil no one knows who that is, had a synth soundtrack, and the guests just happened to be Rick Hunts and like, he just demonstrates the flowbe and you could get it directly through that infomercial and it just started to take off from there.
Yeah, a thirty minute infomercial for something that takes ninety seconds to describe is and demonstrate too. Probably we haven't seen patting like that since probably this episode of ours.
That was that was a low blow, but pretty hilarious.
They sold between seventy dollars and one hundred and fifty dollars a piece. He sold about two million of them, so they sold a ton of these. And if you go on YouTube to you know, and type in flow B if you want to see a demonstration, one of the top things that'll come up is George Clooney because he's been on I saw him on Kimmel, I know, he's been on CBS Sunday Morning. Apparently has been non ironically using the FLOWB for decades on himself is what he says.
At least, Yeah, he said listen, man, it works, yeah, he was. Yeah, non ironically is a great way to put it. So that's it for the Flowbe hats off ra Kunts for sticking to your your dreams, your vision. I think recunts demonstrates a lesson for all of us.
Agreed.
And then last up, Chuck, we have one that's a little dear to my heart. The Snuggie. Yeah.
I never had a snuggy. The snuggie is a blanket with sleeves, full stop.
Yeah, you can wear it. Essentially, it's a blanket you can wear. It's opening in the back like a hospital gown. Basically, I don't remember what.
Like.
I think the current snuggies are made of fleece, but the original ones were definitely not fleece. They were like the most chemically chemical fabrics you can possibly imagine, oh man, and you would get them at like drug stores, that kind of thing. But they originally started as a direct response TV campaign and they made a splash, like almost out of the gate. They were just this talked about item. In two thousand and eight and nine twenty ten, I saw there was a blogger who I could not find
the name of. If this was you write in and let us know because it was great. They said that the people in the Snuggie commercial who are just doing like everyday stuff but wearing this blanket, he said, they all looked like members of a laid back satanic cult.
That's amazing. It's pretty good. That's a cult I wouldn't mind being in. Actually, the only cult that appeals to.
Me, this snuggy cult.
Yeah, they sold a ton of them, though, like all of these, that seems to be a recurring theme. They sold twenty five million Snuggies, so not twenty five million dollars. That's about five hundred million bucks. And they did that generally between two thousand and eight and topped out at that number by twenty thirteen. So it wasn't it wasn't a one year wonder. It was a you know, I had a little bit of staying power.
It did. And Snuggie wasn't the first one. Apparently, the very first blanket with sleeves was called the slanket, which was invented by a freshman at University of Maine and I think nineteen ninety eight. It's name was a course and that made its a splash, I guess on QVC and I think it enjoyed like a resurgence during the Snuggy era. But even before the Snuggie and after the Slanket, there was the Freedom Blanket, the Book Blanket, the Cuddle Rap,
the Toasty Rap. The difference was Snuggie went all in on their direct response TV campaign and they I think the cute name really helped too.
Yeah, for sure. And you never know when you're you know, something is just going to hit the zeitgeist. It just in just the right way, you know.
Yeah, And I said it had a place in my heart. The Snuggie did that. It's because for Halloween two thousand and nine, which is the best Halloween I've had as an adult in my life. You me went as a Snuggie and it was a lot of fun. We walked around New York and then went to a friend's party, our friend Adam's party, and just had a great night.
Yeah, that's awesome.
So I think that said Chuck, forty minutes of high quality stuff. You should know podcasting has just been completed.
Yeah, forty two and a half minutes. If you want to get technical.
Oh god, I guess I started after you. Oh now it says forty one fifteen.
Now, Oh my god, I hope this is a big edit job for Jerry.
Well, since Chuck worried about the edit job for Jerry, I think that means it's listener mail time, don't.
You That's right? Instead of listener mail, though, we're gonna do an Instagram comment, okay, because I couldn't find a get into listener mail. But I went to our Instagram page, which is I think that's HYSK podcast, correct is the name of it. And you know we're going to start doing some more fun stuff over there by the way, if you want to give it a follow. But this is from a J gree six a J g r e E six okay, and this was following up on the Kentucky Meat Shower short stuff episode.
Oh good good.
I haven't listened yet because I'm on vacation, but I'm sure you mentioned it's coming up on the Meat Showers anniversary. Guys, and Bathco was supposedly re enacting this event crying laughing emoji. This could be a fun way to do listener mail moving forward. Actually, I always geek out when you two talk about Kentucky. I've gone to your past four Seattle shows. My one question, if I had the chance, was always going to be do you love Kentucky or are we
just really weird? And we're talking about a bit of both, I'm sure and AJ gree six now remembering we've done a few Kentucky based episodes now that I think about it.
Yeah, remember the Beverly Hills supper Club fire in northern Kentucky.
Yeah, and the Blue People, right.
Were they out of Kentucky? You're right, You're right. Kentucky wasn't great memory, sure, and how jack Hammer's worked that was Kentucky heavy.
Oh, we probably we had to mention Kentucky in our Thoroughbreds episode.
Definitely. Man, we really have to done a lot of Kentucky. Sorry, Iowa, we need to do a show in Kentucky.
I've always on it. Just Lexington or Louisville is the big question, so let us know.
Okay, there you go. Well who was that again?
R J gree six, Yeah, something like that.
Thanks a lot our J gree six or something like that. We appreciate you hanging out on our Instagram page. We have that Instagram page. I think we have a Facebook page too. We're on X Blue Sky TikTok we're even on TikTok Chuck. Is't that nuts?
I did not even know that.
I'm pretty sure we are. A shout out by the way to Spencer, our social media friend who helps us big time with that stuff.
Yeah, I mean we'll shout those guys out. If you're looking to hire someone to do your paid professional social media, you can do a lot worse than hot Dog Sandwich. Those guys are great.
They are great, and they're fun to work with and they just know what they're doing.
Yeah, super cool dudes.
So yeah, keep an eye out on our social media stuff for I guess some more things from us than you're probably used to, and then you can also, as always, contact us via email at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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