ThighMaster
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.
The device is two bent metal tubes joined by a spring-loaded hinge. You put it between your knees and squeeze, working the inner thigh, though the same hinge works the arms if you hold it differently. It was invented in Sweden by Anne Marie Bennstrom, then a physical-medicine intern, as a therapy device called the V-Bar, and it was marketed under the ThighMaster name by Joshua Reynolds, an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune who had already made money on the mood ring and who is often wrongly credited as the inventor.
Somers was the one who made it a phenomenon. She had been fired from Three's Company after a pay dispute nearly a decade earlier, and by her account investors brought the gadget to her and her husband Alan Hamel pitched as upper-body equipment. She asked whether it worked on the inner thighs, called the V-Toner "a very unsexy name," and took it on as the ThighMaster. It launched in 1990, and the infomercials showed people squeezing while they watched television, with Somers inviting viewers to squeeze their way to shapely hips and thighs for $19.95. In September 1991 she was back on ABC's TGIF lineup in Step by Step, so for a while she was on in both the show and the ad breaks.
The couple sold more than 10 million units, at which point, Somers said, they stopped counting; she later put the number at around 15 million, roughly $300 million at the advertised price, and she bought out her partners to own the brand outright. It still sells without advertising. The ThighMaster earned her an induction into the Direct Response Hall of Fame, and she said she expected it to be on her tombstone. Somers died in October 2023, the day before her 77th birthday.
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