As Seen on TV: Did you buy it?

Have you ever pulled the trigger on a bona fide "As Seen on TV" infomercial purchase, and if you did, what was the product and how did it work out for you?

Both were purchased in brick and mortar stores, but we own the Magic Bullet, which has become a staple in our kitchen, and a box of ShamWows, which are a sham, as far as I'm concerned. My partner's grandmother bought her dad a FlowBee off of a TV infomercial, and he used it pretty regularly for several years.

Others, like those ceramic pans or the perpetually sharpened razor, have me intrigued but I know they've got to be too good to be true.

 

See, they never get me with their late night hour-long infomercials. Nope, never. I'll watch them when I'm lonely and half-drunk, but I've never once gone to their website to BUY NOW. Not my thing. The whole $19.95 ...AND IF YOU BUY NOW racket would make me feel like a soulless consumer.

No, no... they get me two years later with said miracle widget in the impulse buy section at the checkout of a Wal-Mart. They get me when I've got three gallons of milk and a roll of duct tape in my arms and I'm waiting on Debbie McSaddlebags to get her bulging cart of Doritos-encrusted porkchops out of my way so I can dash from the warehouse haven of wandering white trash, when suddenly, I see it: that microfiber cloth on a plastic stick to clean the inside of my car's windshield. Only $9.99. Little spray bottle for your Windex. Only $9.99. Extra cloth sock thingie. Only $9.99. Okay, you win. SOLD. Turns out I actually use the thing pretty regularly. It works well. But I still feel a little dirty for falling into their wonder gizmo trap.

 

I bought this type of machine called Orbitrek more than ten years ago. At times it has served me as an expensive clothes hanger, but I'm using it regularly now, still working...

 

I LOVE MY MAGIC BULLET! I use it almost every day!

 

My parents bought a DR Trimmer..."I was all wtf are you guys thinking?". Turns out the thing is a pretty decent machine!

 

DUH, I N E V E R watch commercial channels...unless it's something good, then I record it and watch it later or the next day,
we always have something in reserve....like MASTERPIECE THEATER... (now if I could only understand the Brit language) It was better years ago when still married to the Brit wife...it grows on you.... (the langauage, ......)

 

We got the drill powered auger thingy that is supposed to make planting easier and will tear up weeds.
The drill was horribly under powered and the auger bits only work in loose soil.

Only other thing was the strips of nylon screen that you hang from the top of the door frame so you can leave the door open and keep bugs out.
Worked ok for awhile but the strips got tangled easily and pulled them off by accident more than a few times.

 

Bought a bottle of What Odor? from Billy Mays about a year ago. It works well enough around the cat box...

 

Got a pedi-egg. Works wonderfully, when I have time to use it.

 

I bought a Time-Life Singers/Songwriters from the 60'-70's. It was well worth the money.
I bought a collection of Ron Popeil knives, most of which I don't use. Still, it was cheap. (got what I paid for)
I bought a thing called The Bodyblade. It's basically a fibreglass flat rod you shake back and forth to tone your muscles. Cost $99 if I recall correctly. (hardly used it)
Bought a set of knives and knock-off samurai swords off of a knife show on tv. Gave the swords away as presents.
Probably other things I'm forgetting.

I'm a tv shopaholic, it seems like.
If I had more money, I'd have less money. If that makes any sense.

 

Magic Bullet. Works great for making chocolate milk or general blending, but it won't cut, blend, whip, or crush anything larger than roughly the size of a grain of sand.

My sister and I bought the Steam Shark for our parents. Seemed to work well for cleaning their floors, but can't attest to their longevity (or lack thereof), which seems to be the biggest complaint.

 

I wish I hadn't opened this thread. That vacuum hair cutter has caught my fancy and I am now in process of researching things which do that.

Those infomercials work against themselves with someone like me. When I am overloaded, I cannot make decisions, so their 'but wait, there's more' totally kills their sale, no matter how good the product.

yes, though ... like and earlier post ... JML ads do leave depth charges so that when they appear in the shops, I am at risk. One thing I bought was the floor brush which has rubber spikes. Brilliant concept and it is now my main brush.

 

Thankfully, they don't really air infomercials here. I know they are around, but I just never seem to see them as I would have when I lived in Toronto.

And while I was living in Toronto, I can't remember ever purchasing anything from the teevee. As a kid, I think my Mom might have bought a set of Ginsu knives from a flea market huckster, but I think that might be the extent of things.

 

The knives are basically microserrated blades iirc so they'll be fine until those serrations wear out at which point you're left with mediocre steel, but I suppose a lot of people just don't use knives enough (or well enough) to notice or care about the difference.

Had a magic bullet... got too hot too easily, loved to eat it's silicone rings, and was really pretty poor at blending things. What really killed it was somehow being pretty much as loud as a fullsized blender.

We do have one of those fist sized steamers from the mall kiosk equivalent of As Seen On TV though. Hilariously enough it's the only steamer we've ever had that actually works and does an amazingly good job at just vomiting nice hot steam out the opening. Singlehandedly responsible for keeping pretty much everything more respectable than a Tshirt in my home wrinkle free.

Mighty Putty is another good one, from what I've gathered it's just ordinary epoxy putty but I usually see it selling cheaper and in better quantities than "normal" epoxy putty.

 

I suppose I should have added, I always hated that damn Ginsu knife. Sure, you never had to sharpen it, but it just felt like crap in my hand.

 

I want to try one of those Ninja blenders. I think they're supposed to have six blades.

 

My son's feet peel incredibly at this time of year; I might get one for him.

I have a TiVo, so I don't see informercials. However, we do have the Ove Gloves, which I think are As Seen On TV products. They work well for heat resistance.

 

I bought my wife something that resembles this. Since then, then we've purchased a replacement.



http://www.simplyasseenontv.com/product_info.php?products_id=39405951

 

Ditto on the time-life cd's got some good 60's-70's music back in the day before you could find it on the net.

 

I flip canned-air-dusters upside down and use the freeze spray effect to kill anything with an exoskeleton from a distance. Works well on flying pests too.