Late night infomercials

[yuandrew]

Ok, so I'm having a little trouble sleeping so I turned on TV and started switching through channels. Well, as you may guess, I went through a lot of infomercials.

Ok, there's two different "money makeing" ones offering books, videos, and software for such (very popular now a days)

There's one real estate thing

Vonage VOIP phone service? This is the first time I've seen it on TV

Tempur Pedic mattresses (could be useful right now)

And finally, a Euro-Pro steam cleaner thingy.

[Bravo25]

Just keep in mind that all of those infomercials are designed to do one thing.

Seperate you from your money. They have really neat "catch" phrases like, 90 day free trial. But you can't order unless you are willing to use a credit card.
It is like the "money back" gaurentee. They figure that less than half of the dissatisfied people will actully return it for their money back. So as long as the profit margin is at least 105 % they still make money.

Besides I hate listening to a 30 minute sales pitch.

[PhotonWrangler]

They're pretty annoying and I view all of them as snake oil. Considering the time of the night that they air, the advertisers are spending the least possible amount of money to rake in the most possible revenue on their stuff. That speaks for itself.

[cobb]

Fun to watch huh? I like the ring tone and other cell phone related commercials and the knives one. Ever see the one where for 30 bucks you get like 200 pocket knives?

[PhotonWrangler]

Fun to watch huh? I like the ring tone and other cell phone related commercials and the knives one. Ever see the one where for 30 bucks you get like 200 pocket knives?

NOW how much would you pay?

[The_LED_Museum]

I have a website called "The Infomercial Toliet" all about these pieces of late night TV feces. I won't provide the URL here because it has some naughty language sprinkled within its pages. But you can snag it off my vector page at http://toyletbowlbbs.home.att.net/ because there are parental ratings assigned to and displayed with each website's link.

[Lightraven]

Infomercials these days are a mixed bag. Some are legitimate products--Aero bed and Tempur pedic mattresses/pillows are pretty good. I have both.

The early days of infomercials gave them a very bad name, and most of the products advertised in that manner are still nothing I would waste money on (Bose Wave radio, Rich Dad/Poor Dad CDs, Ionic Breeze), but occasionally there are quality products made by companies that choose this route.

[gadget_lover]

How apropos! My wife and I were just watching TV over lunch and stumbled into a Dean Martin on DVD infomercial. Since we both had fond memories of his show we watched for a while.

What I love about infomercials is the tacky way they present the most boring products.

What I hate about infomercials are the deceptive ways they disguise the prices. Case in point;

MYTCD - Dean Martin Variety Show, start your collection with the Special Edition Variety Show at $9.95 (plus $3.95 s&h) and you will receive two more Best of the Dean Martin Variety Show DVDs every other month for $19.95 each (plus s&h).

So how much are you paying? $13.90 for the first, and $23.90 * 2 ($47.80) every other month.

You can cancel at any time, but they don't say if they'll take them back.

It's kind of fun to look at the shipping and handling charges to see if it is more than their cost of the product. Often it is, and it's not refundable. It makes sense to offer a 100% money back garantee if you still make a profit from the S&H.

Daniel

[MaxaBaker]

hehe, I like watching infomercials. It's fun to make fun of them!

My favorites are the Scuunci Steamer thing (uh-huh, I'm sure it can really steam through metal............... of course that works), the Oxyclean/Orange Glow/etc. other cleaners (can dissolve and remove hardened cement from the living room carpet), and the knife ones where they can supposedly cut tomatoes to the level of slicing the indevidual atoms in half (they can also cut through cardbord, pineapples, bricks, titanium chunks, TVs, and a space shuttle in a single swipe of the blade)................COUGH!!!! (oh.......and after you cut your way through the rainforest, the blade will still be sharp enough to cut any part of a cow in half without even applying pressure!)






Hey, did you know that the word gullible is not in the dictionary?!?!

[jtr1962]

I've found that most of the infomercial products will find their way into the local discount stores within six months at about one-third of the price they were originally sold at. If something seems that interesting, I'll just wait. More often than not, informercials advertise crap that I wouldn't take even if it were free. I used to watch them sometimes. I rarely bother any more unless I'm in the mood for laughs. The guy selling a book telling you how to get free money from government programs has to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a while but after five minutes his voice got really irritating so time to change channels.

[nemul]

i hate these stupid "Live Link", "Tango Personals", "Vibe Line",

the girls are like hi, i'm a 19 y/o virgin with a hot body and i dont have a life so i like to stay home and call 1-900 numbers and talk with random guy! sure!

and Tango Personals with some stupid dude splitting wood with cheap porn music in the background. It sounds like he says "I love crunchy livin" lmao

theres one with some girl that says "Let's get something started" with a cheap ripp off of Black Eye Peas "let's get it started" playing

[JackBlades]

I pretty much only watch TV in the wee hours and it pisses me off to pay $50 a month for CATV fully half of it is this crap!

[nemul]

I pretty much only watch TV in the wee hours and it pisses me off to pay $50 a month for CATV fully half of it is this crap!

aint that the truth!

[cobb]

All yes, nothing like seeing the same thing on multiple channels. At least there is adult swim.

[BugOutGear_USA]

Has anyone seen the Shakelight infomercial? I keep hearing about it, but never actually seen it.

[The_LED_Museum]

I've seen parts of the regular commercial for the shake light, but was unaware that there was an infomercial about this product.