Infomercial Nation

Some nights I fall asleep with the television on. Often the channel that is on when I drift off into slumber ends its regular programming and instead broadcasts a series of half-hour-long infomercials. The topics are very wide-ranging, but they all have one thing in common: you can get an edge over everyone else if you buy their product, and at such a steal of a price!

The amazing thing is that these commercial "programs" are often more entertaining than the regular programming. Let's just say that the producers of these spots really know how to get my attention! And that can be rough on me, considering that I usually would be better off sleeping at four in the morning (after all, isn't that why I switched my working hours from the graveyard shift seven years ago?).

Even though many of these infomercials just keep repeating the same tape throughout the presentation, they are often the more interesting. Here are a few of the infomercials that have piqued my interest for various reasons:

Free Money: just go to a website, type in your name, and the government probably will be sending you a check, possibly for thousands of dollars. Perennial infomercial fixture Kevin Trudeau has written a book to this effect and is interviewed by two very attractive, very busty women for the duration of the show (with plenty of camera shots at them). Trudeau's message, regardless whichever of his books he is pitching, is almost always with the accompanied theme that THEY don't want you to know this privileged information he is sharing with you. What a nice guy, to stand up against THEM for you and me (and make a little dough on the side)!

Size Matters...to 88% of women (and the other 12% are lying). So says Dr. Victoria Zdrok, also very attractive and busty, with what sounds like a Russian accent, to the accompaniment of "real opinions" emphatically delivered by various incredibly shallow and self-centered young women affirming this notion. The solution is to buy their product, which will "extend" the happiness of its users.

I've seen infomercial after infomercial extolling the virtues of hard, sweaty exercise workouts, sometimes with DVDs being sold, sometimes with quirky (and sometimes dangerous) looking exercise equipment, and sometimes with both. And then there's the commercial that just says to put on their tight, squeezing, elastic suit around your body (under your clothes, of course) and you'll LOOK as if you've been working out without having to actually do anything. Yeah!

Finally, at least for the scope of this article, there is Brainetics, a program designed by math whiz Michael Byster that contains instruction on math and memory shortcuts. Brainetics, as the infomercial clearly reveals, is marketed to parents of little children with the not-so-subtle implication that (1) it will increase their intelligence and give them the needed competitive academic edge over other children and (2) the current, conventional system of education is hopeless without the aid of a system like Brainetics. The whole infomercial has Byster in front of groups of beaming, enthusiastic little children who instantly shout out the answers to what seem like the most complicated of arithmetic problems. More on Brainetics in a later article.

I haven't begun to touch upon the many other types of infomercials out there; frankly, some of them (like the ones dealing with household cleaning) don't exactly capture my attention. But they all seem to have a common theme. The product being sold is inexpensive, necessary, timely, and not available anywhere else. And if you don't buy their product, you are doomed to failure and unhappiness. Or mediocrity at best.