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The black beard, the blue shirt and khakis, and the friendly bellow that opened every pitch: "Hi, Billy Mays here!" He was the face and voice of the entire As-Seen-On-TV universe — the man who made OxiClean a household word by sheer force of enthusiasm.
The Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine: a clamshell of ridged nonstick plates, tilted so the grease ran down into a little plastic tray you could hold up to the camera. George Foreman grinned through the infomercial, the tray filled, and the grill ended up in every dorm room and first apartment of the late 90s.
A wax stick rubbed on your forehead while a voice repeated the same phrase three times and never explained what it did. The most annoying ad on television—and it somehow worked.
The blanket with sleeves. Regular blankets "slip and slide" and trap your hands, so America was sold a backwards fleece robe for $14.95 — buy one get one, free book lights. Everyone mocked the commercial. Everyone bought one anyway. It was, infuriatingly, cozy.
Suzanne Somers in a leotard, squeezing a blue-and-white spring between her knees, and the promise that you could squeeze your way to shapely hips and thighs. The ThighMaster infomercial ran so often in the early 90s that the thing was a punchline before most people owned one, and then they bought one anyway: more than 10 million of them.