New and Improved!

I like to watch infomercials and guess how the product will fail for the person who buys it. What are they not telling us? Some holes are obvious, like an egg-slicer. One minute into watching it work reminds you a knife is easier to use and clean. But some are harder to figure out, like The Magic Bullet. “In one…two…three…easy seconds you can have fresh salsa! Serve it from the bowl used to chop. Put another bowl on The Magic Bullet, and in one…two…three…easy…really…quick…seconds you can have banana puree!” Sure, there’s the obvious: it takes longer to work than the actors suggest. Here’s what they all ignore: if you make a meal in the five-minute demo time, all of your banana puree will taste like garlic and onions. On the infomercial, they never rinse the blade in between!

Here are my questions:
Why aren’t you cleaning the blender in front of me? Maybe it is deadly to the touch. I like how you remind me that it’s dishwasher safe, but now I have to make dinner in three wash and rinse cycles. Looks like the guacamole is gonna take a few hours, kids!
Who needs banana puree? If I’m in the store buying ripe bananas, I might as well reach for the Gerber.
What’s with the name? The Magic Bullet takes historical conspiracy lemons and makes lemonade! In three easy seconds!

The funny thing is they actually have a page of FAQs. Forget about the answers they provide that all end in “…following these instructions, it’s a snap!” The questions themselves are indication enough that the product doth stink--especially if they are asked frequently.

I hold all infomercials to the Ronco Electric Food Dehydrator standard. The product that ensorcelled me as a kid and taught me how to finally save money on all that beef jerky I buy weekly. What’s your favorite? My friend A.L. writes:

I always like the one about knives. They always have a stereotypical Caucasian house wife, smiling like Vanna White brandishing the sharpest knives of all time, cutting ‘tomato cans as easily as a tomato’ and I think a) why would she need knives that sharp? b) this is the reason why serial killers only exist in the US and c) why did Uma Thurman have to go to Japan to have her Samurai Sword hand made, when she could have gotten a whole set for only 3 easy payments of $19.99?