But Wait! There's More!

They’re the TV shows everyone knows, they’re ridiculed constantly—and they make an awful lot of money.

They’re infomercials.

Crowning a King of Infomercials is a task too daunting for someone such as me, but I imagine Ron Popeil would be somewhere in the royalty. (Someone has suggested the Queen of Infomercials would be Richard Simmons. I roll my eyes and carry on).

You have likely heard Popeil passed away this week. He was 86.

If you watched television in a certain era, even if you didn’t buy any of it, you knew all the stuff he was pitching. In the days before half-hour demonstrations, he bought 30 and 60-second spots. He first got noticed in the “Pipes For Pitchmen” column in Billboard of January 28, 1956. “We understand that,” wrote columnist Bill Baker, “Ron Popeil, a newcomer to the pitch business, is kinda knockin’ them for a loop in Woodworth’s five and dimer opposite Macy’s, New York, with the Do-It-Yourself Plastic Plant Kit.”

Yes, Popeil started out as one of those “Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up” guys on the sidewalk. Here’s a syndicated story from August 10, 1973; it’s been edited to focus on the Popeil parts.

Pitchmen Chop Their Way to Your Wallet
by GLENDA DANIEL
Ron Popeil is a millionaire today because he learned at the age of 15 to make a perfect rose from a radish. Then he learned to fascinate folks with his tricks. Ron, who is now president of Ronco Products, Inc., has been known to create roses for 12 hours at a stretch—demonstrating paring knives at county fairs and dimes-stores, from the Atlantic City Boardwalk to the California shore. Now he has switched to 30-second spots on your late night TV.
Recently, Ron recalled the old days: “It took strong kidneys, and my lungs were actually sore at the end of a working day.”
If you haven’t seen Ron work, you’ve watched others like him and at least been tempted to buy their products—vegetable choppers and fancy glass cutters, for instance, garbage compactors that double as kitchen stools, and magnetized window washers that clean both sides of your pane at the same time.
The gadgets are endless and endlessly appealing. Never mind that you suspect they’re worthless or at best unnecessary. . . .

When Ron Popeil worked on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, he said he spent six minutes on a demonstration, with four minutes allotted for collecting money. He gave six spiels an hour. “You have to keep the momentum going,” he says. . . .
“You also have to create a need,” Ron instructs. “If it’s two weeks to Thanksgiving and you’re making the traditional rose from a radish, you say ‘I know a woman who fixed these for her Thanksgiving dinner.’ ” . . .
Then there’s the classic case of the woman who says loudly, “I bought one of those last year and it didn’t work.” The thing to do at that point, says Ron, is to ask her to pick one for you to demonstrate. Chances are, the crowd will just think she’s inept—and probably she was. . . .
Pitchmen all over the country seem to know each other. Often the trade runs in families. Ron’s father, S.J. Popeil, is one of the best known oldtimers. He, too, has a gadget company, Popeil Brothers, which operates in direct competition with Ronco. . . .
Ron Popeil, not known for his modesty (what pitchman would be?) claims he was one of the best. “I’ve cajoled people out of their last penny,” he brags. “I’ve left them without bus fare home.”

Popeil and his dad had a falling out, reported the Chicago Tribune in a February 14, 1973 story, basically because of the competition. Popeil, by this time, had dropped the beloved Veg-O-Matic from his line-up. That was after the FCC ordered him to reduce the claims of how well it sliced tomatoes.

The Associated Press profiled him, with the photo below, in papers published in November and December of 1982.

Late-Night Fast Talker Sells to a Targeted Audience
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Remember how your eardrums were assaulted by blaring late-night television advertisements for Veg-a-Matic, the device that slices, dices and shreds its way through your cooking chores?
How about more recent commercials for Mr. Dentist ("The Plaque Attacker"), Pocket Fisherman ("rod, reel, line and hook the whole thing!") or the Vibrating Back Massage Air Cushion ("Bye-bye backache! Yes, it's concentrated massage where you need it most")?
If so, you might wonder who is behind the commercials that for years have jarred late movie viewers frequently with ads for any given product repeated night after night and several times during any one night.
The voice is that of Ron Popeil, founder of Ronco, the firm that uses TV hard-sell to push its assortment of gadgets and gewgaws.

"Ronco wants to hit the viewer two or three times an hour and hit the same viewer every night in the same time period," said David Woodcock, general sales manager for KCOP-TV, an independent Los Angeles-area station. "It may cost $1,200 for one 30-second spot on the 'Tonight Show,' but maybe only $100 at the same time for a spot with us or another independent," Woodcock said. "They get 12 for the price of one."
Popeil got his business started and cut his first commercial in 1964, and has been doing a land-office business ever since.
"And I started with zero," Popeil said during an interview this month at his Beverly Hills homes where all his commercials are now filmed at a cost of up to $20,000 each. "I was working in a dime store in Illinois six days a week doing product demonstrations. I would buy other people's products and practice my marketing technique," said Popeil.
Popeil's first-year sales in 1964 were $200,000. By the time he went public and started selling Ronco stock in 1968, his annual sales were $8.8 million. Now, at age 47, Popeil presides over a Ronco empire that he said accounts for $35 million in annual retail sales with its current line of 17 products.
Popeil says 85 percent of his products are sold during the month of December.
Ronco spent more than $6 million on TV advertising during the first two weeks of December 1981, and prepared an even more expensive blitz this month.
“When you go out to buy a Christmas present, you wonder what you can get that the person doesn’t have,” Popeil said. “You know they’ll have a toaster and color TV, but what are the odds they’ll have a Mr. Microphone or a Miracle Broom?”

Popeil took the six-minute demonstrations he did in stores and compacted them for commercial TV. When infomercials came along in the ‘80s, he merely expanded them. I suspect that’s when the REAL money came rolling in.

All those 30-minute ads featuring Tom Vu and his yacht-babes, Susan Powter yelling “STOP THE INSANITY!!”, and a blond gymnast writhing onto a Soloflex (I succumbed. I bought a Soloflex T-shirt in San Francisco) caused the price of formerly almost-unsaleable air-time to skyrocket. It was in demand now by all kinds of people from Kevin Trudeau (didn’t he have a Larry King look-alike set?) to televangelists. For a while, Popeil moved to radio, which was cheaper and full of stations with marginal programming.

He sold Ronco in 2005.

But, wait! There’s more!

Popeil once won the Ig Nobel Prize in Consumer Engineering. He happily displayed the honour on his web site. Even if you think he was shady, you have to like a guy that has a sense of humour about himself.