Stuff You Should Know - Some Silly Inventions That Became Wildly Popular

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Once in a while someone comes up with a solution for a problem we didn’t know we had, and maybe even a problem that didn’t even exist. Even more rarely, the stars align just right so that some crackpot invention captures everyone’s imagination.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And it's time to buckle down and get it. 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 80s, but I really associate most of this with the 90s, don't you? Oh, I just mean this episode takes me back to like 2012. Oh, gotcha.

But yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, this article was clearly written around 2009 or 2010 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. 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 drugstores and like maybe a bedbath

and 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 800 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 through a store. Yeah. And often, 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. The public, you know, there's a lot of these that were just invented by some person, you know,

is 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 20 plus years, more like 30 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 foreman 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 were, the whole trick is, it's like any kind of standard panini press or something, except they raised, up one side of it so grease could trickle out of it. And that was about the only difference, I think, right? Yeah, but the thing is, it really works. Um, you me 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, bloop just drips 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 pitchman for it. And very wisely, he said, sure, I'll do it. But you have to give me 45% of the profits. Yeah. He made a lot of money on those things. Just crazy gobs of money. Good for him. And there's a similar, so moving.

Moving into our list now, Chuck, and this is in very much stuff you should know tradition, not a top 10. Yeah. Not a full 10 top 10 list, I guess is what we call this kind of thing. Yeah, I don't know that we've ever done 10, and we're never going to. 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 10. Oh, yeah.

That's a good one. That'll be the tell. Everyone will know. We could do a top 10 of our top 10 episodes. Yeah. That 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. And she thanked her lucky stars all the way to the bank later on that she agreed to it. That's right. If you're of a certain age, you may not even know who Suzanne Summers is. Or you may know her as the Thymaster Lady, if you're a little bit older. If you're in our generation and above, you know her as Chrissy from the great, great sitcom Threes Company. Oh, Three's Company, yeah. Yeah, great show.

She was also on 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 3.30 p.m. Saturday right after reruns of Mama's family. Okay. Yeah, I've really never heard of She's a Sherr. I take it she was a 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 in a way better known for. But by the, I mean, that was like the late 70s, early 80s, when she left. F3's company. Apparently, she was making 120 grand less an episode than 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, 1991, 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 Dr. Anne Marie Binstrom invented this thing. in the 60s, but they tweaked it a little bit.

They made it look cooler. They made it a little more colorful and brought it into the 80s slash early 90s 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 a smart lady. She played a dingbat on Three's Company, but Suzanne Summers was very smart woman. Yeah. As evidenced by the perhaps $300 million she made on Hawk and the Thighmaster.

and eventually 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 Thymaster or the V-bar was this kind of device. What would you liken it to?

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. 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, 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 it, you 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 1991. 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. It was a guy wearing a lab coat, Dr. Herbert L. Gould, who was there to, you know, recommend the thing and saying that he uses it. And the cherry on top is that Dr. Gould was an ophthalmologist.

Isn't that 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 doctors at random.

I think he was probably her ophthalmologist, would 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 Summer, appeared in it wearing a leotard, like you would think, for working out, but also pantyhose and high heels, which is a specific kind of look.

Yeah. Oh, actually, there is one more thing, because we buried the lead. The probably 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 2014, 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 fisherman and a little bit of a bio on Ron Poppeel, one of the great salesmen of all time. Oh yeah, Ron Papil, if you had a TV in the 1980s and 90s, then 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... the, I guess even the, like the 50s and early 60s when he made the first infomercial for the Vegematic, it slices, it dices. Like, that was Ron Papille. All these sort of tropes of infomercials,

a lot of them come from the great Ron Papil. 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 16, he was selling his dad's invention. at flea markets and grossing about 500 bucks a day, and that's in 1951. So that's like $10 million 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. And 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, there was just no ignoring this guy.

Yeah, he had the in-shell 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 egg shell and spun around. Very interesting invention. and the GLH, which stood for great-looking hair, the GLH Formula No. 9 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 that stuff down the side of his face? Yeah, I do. It was amazing. It was. Like, what a time when he was on TV. Like sweating what looked like shoe polish and then standing in front of that.

Four Seasons's landscape. Oh my God. What a time to be alive. Amazing. It was like S&L come to life. It really was. Moment after moment, too, something new. Yeah.

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 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 kid didn't. And apparently neither did Ron Popiel because he used it as a selling point. Well, his company, because he was run, 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 you can still get a pocket fisherman.

It 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 fisherman, like it works. If you go on YouTube, there are plenty of examples of people using this thing and catching, like, decent size fish even. It's just not, I think you had in here, maybe it was Strickland that said it solves a 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 size 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 the insides of your thighs. That's what it looks 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. with four nights at residents in downtown Montreal, flights from Porter Airlines, two weekend gold tickets, and $1,000 of cash. Please love me. Lord, Zara Larson, Tena Gray, Sombor, 21 pilots, and more. Download IHeart Radio. Listen to IHeart new music for 10 minutes and enter to win. Osiaga 2026. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people.

Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer. And that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. June is Black Music Month. And on the Drink Champs podcast, we're speaking with the hottest.

names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. Like, Prince, he dropped, like, 30 albums. We dropped, like, five right now. Like, that's the rate we gotta be going. Yep, that's a good attitude.

You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers, like Fab Five Freddy. I directed when the Nazis' early videos. Which one? One love. Wow. Yes. I literally filmed in his apartment,

in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Nans was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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 dumbbell.

If you picture a dumbbell, 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 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 shake weight 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 correct. You use something more like 300% 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 12-pound dumbbell.

So all of this checked out. Yeah. 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 or touched one. I don't believe I have either. But I live with one for a while. Did you? No. It was a mean drunk. Yeah. I wonder if these things had, if they were like in actual gyms.

I don't know. Like, this is one of the things. Like when it comes to exercise equipment, like the thigh mass. or two, the shake weight 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 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 forearm 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 2010. They made something like $40 million 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. I almost said Billy Bigmouth, but that's just what I called mine. Bigmouth Billy Bass took the world by storm in the early 2000s, 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 2000 when Billy Bass spent its year in the limelight. But the story goes back a couple of years earlier. And the inventor Joe Pelletieri 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 taxidermine fish and said, Wouldn't it be great if that thing sang, don't worry, be happy? That's how I envision it. Just what a while.

I mean, was she on peyote? 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 hit of 1988. 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, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. So the thing was actually, for what it was, was a fairly sophisticated piece of gear. They had a sensor 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, why don't you have the thing turn its head out and sort of look at the person, they're serenating? And he was like, by God, Barbara, we've got a kiss again. Right. And that was a big deal. 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 2995, you know, they took a long time to build. It wasn't cheap. It was a well-made piece of gear.

It was 40 days to build one. So I think Jimmy, G.E.M.M.Y was the company that he, 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 short-handed. And these things were going on eBay for, like, three times the amount. Yeah, and I mean, 29.95 in 2000 was about $57 today for a latex singing fish, essentially,

but it just hit just right. And it became like basically the big thing in 2000 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, staying 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 Shuffleboard club, the Chicago location. Okay. Along one wall, they have more than 70 Big Mouth Philly Bass. Wow. Nightmare fuel. That they have choreographed. Uh-huh.

Not even 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 stay in alive. They sing talking heads once in a lifetime, and then they sing Choices by E40. So it's really something to see if you go look up the video. Wow, I got to 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 a reanimation singing to you. I never really thought about that. I didn't either until just the second, Chuck. Well, he sold about $100 million worth of these things. It was popular for about a year, which is all you need really. And they don't even advertise their product. 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 what, they're buying four of them to give to their friends and so on and so on. And they don't realize when they buy it, though, is, you know, that motion

sensor worked pretty well. And so you got sick of it pretty quickly, I think. Yeah, for sure. And 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 Sopranos. No, it was on Sopranos, though. There was a, like, 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 Bedazzler? Yes. This was a big deal. This was a, it came from a guy named Herman Brickman, who was a protege. of Ronphapil. And he invented it in the late 70s. It was called the studsetter, the Roncoe rhinestone at first. And, you know, it was like kids used it some in the 80s, but in the 90s, it became a really big deal because people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, it became like a fashion thing because people would bedazzle like, it was 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 rhinestone, plunge it down, and all of a sudden you've just bedazzled your jeans. 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 try. truly bedazzle.

That seems like the minimum, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it looks kind of like a stapler. And mental floss, you got some stuff from mental floss on this one. And apparently Ron Papil at one point, as a selling point, said it can make an $8 pair of jeans worth up to $50. The thing that kills me from that is worse up to $50. Like, are you going to go 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 Y2K fashion trend that came from millennium optimism. I don't remember optimism of the millennium. Do you? I remember like fear and dread. Hmm.

I don't remember. I remember the fear and dread about the Y2K 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 was pretty out of it at the time. For sure. But 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 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 don't bring up like little video. 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 bedazzled cell phone cases and stuff like that.

And I know that I guess you've seen Vaseline jars, bedazzled? Where are you seeing these? I saw it on, man, I can't remember where I saw it, But somebody took a little mini Vaseline brand, Vaseline petroleum jelly jar and just redid the whole thing in different colored rhinestones. And it looks like it's a bedazzled Vaseline jar. It's pretty impressive. Yeah. I mean, I guess if you need to grease yourself up, you might as well have fun doing it.

So the thing is, though, 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. Right. There'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 90s. 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 going to end up doing eight total.

Because remember, we're not including the Foreman 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 going to say. You just got to wait and see. Experience. You and a pal in Montreal and Oceaga with four nights at residents in downtown Montreal. flights from Porter Airlines, two weekend gold tickets, and $1,000 cash. Please love me. Lord, Zara Larson, Dame McRae, Sombor, 21 pilots, and more. Download IHeart Radio. Listen to IHeart new music for 10 minutes and enter to win.

Osiaga, 26. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most. fascinating people, like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're

speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. How legendary you are. I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. Like, Prince, he dropped, like, 30 albums. We dropped, like, five right now. Like, that's the rate we got to be going. Yeah, that's a good attitude.

You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed when the Nazis' early videos. Which one? One love. Wow. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a

whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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 floby. Yeah, what episode did we talk about the flow bee on? Mm-hmm. It 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. 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 in 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 Amex. That's, yeah, I had college capital one. Uh-huh. That's how it works, though. Like, those late-night commercials, essentially, I would guess probably 50, 60% 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. And that was that. But this guy, this was invented by a guy named Rick Hunt's 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 hairstyling industry. He wasn't even in the vacuum industry. He was a carpenter who owned a cabinetry 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 Hans. 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 B, because it makes like a buzzing sound like a bee, and he colored it thusly. It was like 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've got to have one of those, of course. And it engages the vacuum and pulls your hair and into a, you know, they had these like recessed hair tremor blades in there and they had different attachments to cut it at different lengths. So it would just suck in 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 deep. And it supposedly does a deep. 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 floby is, well, two of them. One, you can cut your own hair anytime you want. Well, three. Two, you're going to save a ton of money. The floby's going to pay for itself in a couple of months, depending on the size of your family. And then three, no clippings to pick up because they all get sucked right into your shop back. No must, no fuss.

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 it's always good. It's fun. 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? No, she doesn't do like, it's not like one of those men's barbershops where they offer you a whiskey and the hot towel treatment. But she does a great job. Yeah, no, neither's my. It's a salon, for sure. So let's see. Oh, so I wanted to say also, one of the reasons the phobie gets to me is Rick Hunt'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 Norel. He went to Conair. He went to Remington. I saw. There was a great article on mental floss that really kind of covered the phobia. 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. Yeah.

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 $30,000 of his own money to pay. produce a 30-minute infomercial, and it first aired in 1988. 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 McGill. No one knows who that is.

Had a synth soundtrack, and the guest just happened to be Rick Hunt's. And, like, he just demonstrates the Floby, and you could get it directly through that infomercial, and it just started to take off from there. Yeah, a 30-minute infomercial. for something that takes 90 seconds to describe is, and demonstrate too probably. We haven't seen padding like that since probably this episode of ours. That was a low blow, but pretty hilarious.

They sold between $70 and $150 a piece. He sold about 2 million of them. So they sold a ton of these. And if you go on YouTube and type in Floby, if you want to see a demonstration, one of the top things that will 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 Floby 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 Floby. Hats off, Rick Hunts, for sticking to your, your dreams, your vision. I think Rick Hunt 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 snuggy.

Yeah, I never had a snuggy. The snuggy is a blanket with sleeves, full stop. Yeah, you can wear it, essentially. It's a blanket you can wear. It's open 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 fabric you can possibly imagine.

Oh, man. And you would get them at like drugstores, that kind of thing, but they originally started as a direct response TV campaign. And they made a splash like almost out of the, the gate. They were just this talked about item in 2008, 2009, 2010. 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 snuggy 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 is Snuggie Colt. Yeah, they sold a ton of them, though, like all of these, that seems to be a recurring theme. They sold 25 million Snuggies, so not $25 million. That's about $500 million. And they did that generally between 2008 and topped out at that number by 2013.

So 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 in I think 1998. It's name was Gary Plague. And that made its splash, I guess, on QVC, and I think it enjoyed like a resurgence during the Snuggie era. But even before the Snuggie and after the Slanket, there was the Freedom Blanket, the Book Blanket, the Cuddle Wrap, the Toasty Wrap.

The difference was Snuggie went all in on their direct response TV campaign, and 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 in just the right way, you know. Yeah. And I said it had a place in my heart the Snuggie did. It's because for Halloween 2009, which is the best Halloween I've had as an adult in my life, Yumi 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 Adams party.

Oh, I don't know. And just had a great night, yeah. That's awesome. So I think that's it, Chuck. 40 minutes of high quality stuff you should know podcasting has just been completed. Yeah, 42 and a half minutes if you want to get technical. Oh, God. I guess I started after you.

Oh, no. And says 4115 now. Oh, my God. I hope this isn't 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 going to do an Instagram comment. Oh, okay. Because I couldn't find a good listener mail, but I went to our Instagram page, which is, I think, S.YSK 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. A-J-G-R-E-6. 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 reenacting 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. have 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 A.J. Greene 6, I'm 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. I think it was Kentucky, wasn't it? Great memory.

Sure. And how Jack Hammers worked? That was Kentucky heavy. Yeah, we probably, we had to mention Kentucky in our thoroughbreds episode. Definitely. Man, we really have done a lot of Kentucky. Sorry, Iowa. We need to do a show in Kentucky. I've always wanted to, just Lexington or Louisville is the big question. So let us know. Okay, there you go. Well, who was that again? R.J. Grie 6? Yeah, something like that.

Thanks a lot. RJ Grease 6 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.

Isn't that nuts? I did not even know that. I'm pretty sure we are. 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 stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Joy is essential and it's also elusive. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence.

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