No self-respecting journalist, disc jockey, veejay, entertainment reporter, style writer, or blogger would approach the end of the year without issuing a Top Ten list or an In-Out list to commemorate the trends of the dying year. Top Ten Albums of 2012! Best TV Shows of 2012! Hot New Fashion Trends for 2013!

As much as this blogger wants to jump on the end-of-year bandwagon (as opposed to the end-of-time bandwagon–silly Mayans), I was unable to find a definitive list of the top selling infomercial products of 2012. However, earlier this year, Bankrate.com issued a list of the Top 5 Successful Infomercial Products, ABC News and Forbes.com compiled a list of TV’s Top Selling Infomercial Products, and the Huffington Post published the article As Seen On TV: The 10 Hottest Products Right Now. Unfortunately for the poor Seen On TV bloggers attempting to create a unified list, there is very little overlap among the products delineated in these lists. In fact, there are only two items that appear on more than one list: PedEgg appears in both the Bankrate and Huffington Post articles, and Total Gym appears on both the ABC News and Bankrate lists.

Overall, the Huffington Post list seemed to coincide most closely with SeenOnTV Express’s own best-selling and most popular products. According to the article, the “10 Hottest Products Right Now” are:

1. OrGreenic nonstick ceramic fry pan
2. Sticky Buddy reusable roller
3. Lint Lizard dryer vent cleaner
4. Slice-O-Matic kitchen slicer
5. Aluma Wallet compact protective wallet
6. Deep Romance comemorative Titanic pendant
7. Slim Away waist cincher
8. Edge of Glory knife sharpener
9. Pet Rider car interior protector
10. Ped Egg foot and heal smoother

Newcomer Edge of Glory, from Direct Response leader Telebrands, was just released in April 2012 and was breaking sales records within only a couple of months. We are pretty sure this in unrelated to the success of Lady GaGa’s power ballad “Edge of Glory,” with its stunning lyrical genius:

I’m on the edge
The edge
The edge
The edge
The edge
The edge
The edge
I’m on the edge of glory.

Word.

With 2012 largely behind us, and 2013 looming large, it will be interesting to see which proven-successful infomercial products will continue to be contenders and which new innovations will leap over the edge of glory to become the hottest infomercial products of the coming year.

One of the hallmarks of a good infomercial is an effective product demonstration.  Most people, before they are willing to buy a product, want to see how it works.  If an item is sold in stores, consumers may  have a chance to actually hold the product, look it over, and see if it fits their needs.  For infomercial products, however, consumers are limited to a two-dimensional representation of the item shown on their television screen.  To show how a product works and to illustrate its effectiveness, television marketers harken back to the days of street vendors in using product demonstrations to entice potential buyers.

After all, a pitchman could tell you his knives are amazingly sharp, but unless you see them in action, you are just taking his word for it.  Once you see how it can slice through metal and still be sharp enough for razor thin tomato slices, you will be convinced.  Former pitchman king Billy Mays could tell you that Kaboom! cleaner was the toughest, most effective household cleaner available, but until he showed you what it could do with a bathtub that looked like a crime scene, you had no reason to believe him.

After all, seeing is believing.

Of course, “seeing is believing” is only relevant to producing sales if the product demonstration actually works.  One of the problems with earlier As Seen On TV product demonstrations was that they occurred live before a studio audience.  If the product failed, or if the pitchman failed to appropriately use the  product, the whole demonstration became a fiasco.  Take this example of a home shopping demonstration gone horribly wrong:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgHZe1hraEU

You can actually see when this demonstration starts to head south, and yet the plucky pitchman continues on, risking life and limb to prove that the ladder actually DOES lock into place.  And yet, it doesn’t.

Fortunately for today’s pitchmen, many informercials are filmed in advance of airing and bloopers can be edited out or segments retaped for the perfect pitch.

In the past, when the SeenOnTV Express blog has described an As Seen On TV product on our “Way Back Wednesday” feature, the tone of the article has frequently been a bit snarky.  I mean, let’s face it–some of those early ’80s infomercials  we originally featured were a bit ridiculous.  Today, however, I would like to pay homage to an earlier product that launched a new way to clean:  The Steam Buggy.  One of  the first products offered in our As Seen On TV catalog, the Steam Buggy was a portable steam cleaner that allowed users to clean and sanitize hard-to-clean areas throughout their homes.  It was one of the first products to bring the professional power of steam cleaning right into your home, and since its introduction, steam mops and other steam cleaners have become common ways to powerfully and effectively clean floors, kitchens, bathrooms, and more.

So what is it that has brought about my new-found admiration for steam cleaning?  Having a three-and-a-half-year-old dinner companion leaves my kitchen floor in need of a Hazmat crew after every meal.  Ever since we introduced solid food roughly three years ago, we have been sweeping, wiping, mopping, and chiseling food from our lovely cream-colored tile.  Dealing with the kitchen floor seems as unending and relentless as laundry.  I would sooner try to sweep the sand from the Sahara as attempt to maintain a clean kitchen floor.

We currently have four rotating methods for cleaning our kitchen floor:

• Fastidiously wipe up any spills, vacuum any messes, and sweep or mop the offending area after each meal.
• Give the kitchen floor a quick clean-up at the end of each day.
• Clean up the big, gross spots ASAP, but save the mopping for a weekly chore.
• Ignore it and hope the Mop Fairy makes a surprise visit before the grime on the floor petrifies and becomes a permanent pattern on the tile.

None of these methods are particularly effective for our family.  The first takes too much time.  The second is also pretty time consuming and also doesn’t get the floor as clean as I would like.  The third leaves me cringing every time I walk through the kitchen until Mop Day.  And the fourth?  Well, that’s just gross, and apparently, the Mop Fairy is on strike.

Because none of our floor cleaning methods are able to sufficiently battle a preschooler at mealtime, I’ve been looking for a quick and easy way to really, thoroughly clean the floor without spending too much time behind a broomstick.  I have really been considering a steam cleaner to power away the stuck-on foods and to sanitize the floors–particularly since we will be adding another little mealtime terror to the mix in just a few months, one who will be crawling on the very floors in question.

Though the Steam Buggy served its purpose, I’m looking for something a little more conducive to cleaning an entire floor.  Today’s As Seen On TV steam mops seem to fit the bill.  Two products in particular have caught my eye:  the One Touch Steam Tornado and the Shark Professional Steam Pocket Mop.  Both of these steam cleaners are lightweight and feature an upright design.  The Shark Pro Steamer has the look of typical sweeper mops, but provides three levels of steam control, reusable cleaning cloths, shaped cleaning heads, and a carpet glider head for carpet cleaning.  The One Touch Steam Tornado can be used as an upright or handheld device for cleaning virtually anywhere and also features washable, reusable microfiber cleaning pads.

Finally, getting steamed over our kitchen floors is a good thing.

I like to cook.  In fact, I like to cook so much that I’ve got a bun in my oven right now.  Unfortunately, this little nine-month baking project is making it difficult for me to do much cooking these days.  While eating isn’t much of a problem since I seem to pretty much be starving at all times, the act of actually going into my kitchen is often enough to send me running to the bathroom.  No, eating is not a problem, but the prep work itself is.  In fact, just the other morning I was feeling pretty smug about how decent I felt.  I went in to the kitchen to scramble up some eggs for the family’s breakfast.  As luck (or Murphy’s Law) would have it, my favorite omelet skillet was in the kitchen sink and needed to be washed before using.  I picked up the skillet, but lo and behold, there was DRIED FOOD STUCK TO IT.  This was enough to send me fleeing and to quickly abolish any plans I had of making breakfast for anyone.

What does this have to do with As Seen On TV and infomercial products?  Well, a lot, actually.  You see, my favorite nonstick skillet is several years old.  What once let omelets slide right on out and onto the plate is now chipped, flaked, and scratched, leaving food stuck to the pan and leaving me clinging to the sides of the toilet waiting for this first trimester to be OVER ALREADY.

I can use my pregnancy as an excuse for a lot of things:  I get to take more naps, I eat popsicles like there’s no tomorrow, I get people to lift heavy things for me, and now, I may just use it as an excuse to buy a shiny new As Seen On TV nonstick pan.

The new generation of nonstick pans shown on infomercials these days has a lot to offer over its Teflon predecessors.  And a lack of Teflon is at the top of the list.

Three of the top As Seen On TV contenders feature nonstick ceramic as a healthier alternative to nonstick coatings that scratch, chip, and flake off into your food.  The Orgreenic Cookware natural ceramic nonstick frying pan and the NuWave PerfectGreen nonstick fry pan both use a ceramic nonstick surface that prevents the release of toxins into your food while you cook.  The Yoshiblue Diamondware Skillet uses nano-ceramic infused with diamond particles to create a nontoxic, nonstick, and durable cooking surface.

The benefits of these new As Seen On TV ceramic nonstick pans are many:

• Healthier cooking by eliminating the need for added grease, oils, butter, and unhealthy fats
• Durable nonstick ceramic pans that do not flake, chip, peel, or scratch, protecting the surface of your pan and protecting you from chemicals in your food
• Do not release harmful toxins into your food
• Orgreenic cookware does not contain PFOA
• NuWave Perfect Green fry pan is BPA-free, PFOA-free, PTFE-free, and Cadmium-free
• Yoshiblue Diamondware skillet can easily be wiped clean

Pregnant or not, safe cooking is important to me and my family–and mess free clean-up ain’t too shabby either.

Now, who wants to bring me a popsicle?

If it weren’t enough trouble to try to figure out what to pack for my picky child’s lunch, I have to try to figure out how to keep that lunch cold and fresh and keep it from spoiling.  For the most part, that has led to an inordinate number of peanut butter sandwiches in the school lunch.  My son has an insulated lunch box, but it really just doesn’t keep food cold like I think it should, and let’s face it, who wouldn’t be a little suspicious of eating deli meat, milk, or yogurt that had been sitting at little better than room temperature for four hours or so?

I try putting ice packs or gel packs in the lunch box, but those can tend to squish the sandwich, they only keep the things directly in contact with them cold, and they don’t stay cold until lunch time–especially in warmer weather.  They also hog all the room I need for actual food.

I’ve been pretty unhappy with lunch box choices so far, but the As Seen On TV PackIt “go anywhere mini-fridge” may just be the answer to my lunch-packing prayers.

This As Seen On TV product is more than an insulated lunch bag.  In fact, the PackIt itself is the cooling pack.  Keep PackIt in your freezer, and when you are ready to pack your lunch, pull the cold bag out of your freezer and fill it with whatever you like.  The PackIt insulated bag has the cooling technology built-in.  The cold  completely surrounds your food, keeping it refrigerator-cold for up to 10 hours.  When you use the PackIt for taking lunch on the go, you can pack meats, cheeses, yogurt, milk, and even smoothies to keep them cold and fresh until lunch time . . . and beyond.

PackIt is also great for taking drinks and snacks to the park, the zoo, or the game.  Keep sports beverages ice cold on a hot day.

Another great use for PackIt is storing and transporting baby bottles.  I wish the PackIt had been around when I was a new mom.  I wouldn’t have to be paranoid about keeping milk cold, and it would be a great convenience for nursing moms who have to pump at work.  Simply and discreetly store bottles of milk to take home from the office.

Of course, these days people are looking for ways to live a “greener” lifestyle.  Reusable lunch bags are definitely one way to reduce waste.  PackIt is great for eco-conscious people who want to feed their families fresh, wholesome foods and who do not want to contribute to environmental waste through disposable bags.

It is not often that I get really excited about a product, but the PackIt insulated bag, with its promise of keeping food cold for ten hours, is something I can get behind.

What will you pack in your PackIt?

Last winter was brutal.  BRUTAL.  This winter, I was expecting more of the same, but instead, it has been remarkably mild.  Perhaps some of that unspeakable heat from the summer is still lingering, because today it is more than 70 degrees outside.  In February.  Wow.

All of this warm weather is really starting to give me Spring Fever.  Last week, we talked about ways to get your lawn ready for spring and summer with As Seen On TV garden tools and grass seed.  This week I’ll be sharing with you some new offerings we have just in time for spring planting.  We’ve recently added three new As Seen On TV plants to our catalog, and we still carry some of our infomercial favorites from previous seasons.

No matter what kind of garden you have, infomercial plants are available to make it hardier and more unique than ever before.  We have fruits, vegetables, and flowers, so whether you want to spruce up your landscaping or eat fresh, organic foods without paying a fortune at the store, you can find a plant that will add a little something extra to your garden.  Our latest As Seen On TV home and garden plants offer one each of floral, fruit, and vegetable.

• Popcorn Garden - The Popcorn Garden lets you grow delicious, organic popping corn at home.  By growing your own popcorn, you make sure that the popcorn you eat is fresh and free from chemicals, you save money over organic popcorn at the store, and you create an educational experience for kids at home.  The Popcorn Garden is an easy-to-cut coconut shell fiber growing mat pre-seeded with organic popcorn seeds.  Popcorn Garden comes with complete growing instructions, a popcorn brochure, and a 6″ pot.   With the special Popcorn Garden Buy 1 Get 1 Free offer, you’ll receive two kits for one low price.
• Strawberry Giant – Last year we brought you the Little Giant Blueberry plant that allows you to grow 16,000 blueberries from one plant.  Little Giant Blueberries are still available, but if that’s just not enough berries for you, try adding Strawberry Giant as well.  Strawberry Giant can be grown outdoors in your garden or in pots inside your home.  Strawberry Giant is cultivated to grow in as little as 60 days.  Because it can be grown indoors or outdoors, you can enjoy strawberries all year long.  Strawberry Giant also carries a Buy 1 Get 1 Free offer.
• Hummingbird Vine - Add a splash of color to your landscaping with the super resilient, easy-to-grow Hummingbird Vine.   Hummingbird Vine is a brilliant trumpet vine blooming in yellow, orange, and red.  The colorful trumpet blossoms are filled with nectar, and the vibrant colors and sweet nectar attract hummingbirds to your yard.  Hummingbird Vine grows easily even in poor soil, full sun, or shady areas.  Hummingbird Vine carries a Buy 2 Get 2 Free offer, giving you four plants for only ten dollars.

Popcorn Garden, Strawberry Giant, and Hummingbird Vine are only the latest in our As Seen On TV plant catalog.  To see a full listing of available plants, visit the SeenOnTV Express As Seen On TV garden catalog.  Get growing!

It has been a while since the SeenOnTV Express blog looked at some of the famous faces of infomercial products.  Ron Popeil may have been the biggest name in infomercials for the previous generation, but more recently, Billy Mays was the name most people associated with As Seen On TV marketing.  However, Mays’s death in 2009 left DRTV marketing looking for a new spokesman, and Mays’s friend and colleague Anthony Sullivan quickly became a household name by selling As Seen On TV household products.

Born in 1969 in Devon, England, Anthony “Sully” Sullivan perfected his pitch on the streets of London, modeling his techniques after the street vendors of that famed city.  When he came to the United States in the 1990′s, he became a product demonstrator and pitchman for the product that would come to be known as the Smart Mop.  When Home Shopping Network (HSN) executives spied Sully, they quickly hired him and launched the Smart Mop into a top-selling As Seen On TV cleaning product.

Before long, Sully was so successful that HSN promoted him to prime time.  After he fulfilled his one-year contract as network show host, Sully realized that he was destined for greater things.  He left HSN to launch his own business, Sullivan Productions.  Sullivan Productions is the creator of commercials for some of the hottest selling infomercial products:

• Swivel Sweeper
• Kaboom
• OxiClean
• Aluma Wallet
• Jupiter Jack
• Heeltastic
• One Second Needle
• H20 Mop
• and more

In 2009, Sully co-starred in the Discovery Channel series Pitchmen, for which he was an Executive Producer, along with fellow infomercial star Billy Mays.  After Mays’s death, Sully continued the series alone in 2010 and 2011.  The series is now available on DVD.

Though Mays’s death left a void, Sully was quickly able to fill his friend’s shoes, becoming the new face of OxiClean, and in fact, the most recognizable face of infomercial products today.  Sully is the main spokesman for A.J. Khubani’s Telebrands, leader in direct response television marketing and creator of the “As Seen On TV” logo.

According to his website, Sully has “launched over twenty products, sold hundreds of millions of millions of dollars worth of merchandise and has been recognized a record breaking three times for making the best commercial of the year by the Electronic Retailing Association.”   He has appeared on The Late Show with Conan O’Brien, and he has been featured on NBC’s 20-20, ABC’s Nightline , CBS, USA Network , BBC, Fox News, Rachel Ray, and Access Hollywood.

In an industry that has recently been rocked by scandal (Vince Offer’s legal troubles and Don Lapre’s federal fraud charges and suicide, for example), Anthony “Sully” Sullivan offers a sense of trust and security.  Along with his reputation and charm, Sully’s personable quips have the audience loving him.  It seems like he’ll continue as one of the industry’s leading pitchmen for years to come.

After all, as Sully says, “Life’s a pitch, and then you buy.”

It is hard to believe that it has been nine years since the invention of a product that revolutionized children’s comfort and precipitated a spate of dual-purpose As Seen On TV products for kids.  What was the groundbreaking product launched in 2003?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrU-TWUA9Hw

Pillow Pets sold like crazy, becoming one of the most popular Christmas gifts in 2003.  As a stuffed animal/pillow combination, Pillow Pets appealed to kids’ love of cuddly things and it appealed to their parents’ desire to comfort their children without adding more clutter.  By serving as both a soft plush animal and a pillow, travel became easier, naptime became easier, TV time became easier.  A child playing with his favorite stuffed animal could take snuggling a step further by just falling asleep on it.

Since then, several other As Seen On TV products for children have followed the dual-purpose model of Pillow Pets:

• Happy Nappers – Unzips and reverses from a play pillow shaped like an animal’s home to a plush animal that resides within it.  For example, a castle reveals a dragon, a doghouse reveals a puppy, and an igloo reveals a penguin.
• Blankid Buddy – Blankid Buddies take the two-in-one animal/pillow idea to the next level.  Each Blankid Buddy is a backpack, blanket, pillow, and stuffed animal–a four-in-one cuddle companion that is ideal for travel.
• Pawggles – Pawggles differentiate themselves by breaking away from the pillow idea.  Rather, Pawggles (from “paws” plus “giggles”) are stuffed animals that convert to funny house slippers.

The newest As Seen On TV kids’ offering in the animal/bedtime genre is CuddleUppets.  A CuddleUppet is most similar to a Blankid Buddy in that both are animal/blanket combinations.  However, each CuddleUppets animal is a puppet rather than a regular stuffed animal.  In addition, CuddleUppets feature a large blanket measuring 28″ by 39″, big enough to wrap around your child.  A CuddleUppet can be used as a puppet alone, and it can be used while your child is swaddled in the blanket.   Even as your child sleeps, the CuddleUppet puppet head can be used much as any “lovey.”

CuddleUppets come in six styles and colors:

• Poodle (pink)
• Monkey (purple)
• Puppy (yellow)
• Crocodile (green)
• Elephant (blue)
• Bear (brown)

CuddleUppets features special quantity pricing; the more you buy, the more you save.  Because CuddleUppets are puppets and not mere stuffed animals, having the full menagerie can make for some fun puppet shows for your kids.

For your first SeenOnTV Express blog post of 2012, we’re going to bring back Way Back Wednesday, looking back at the As Seen On TV products that have shaped the infomercial products of today.  Since the new year brings with it resolutions to lose weight and get fit, this week’s Way Back Wednesday post is going to focus on one of the leading As Seen On TV fitness gurus.  No, we’re not talking about Jane Fonda or Richard Simmons here.  We’re talking about none other than direct response marketing’s hirsute hero Tony Little.

Tony Little is perhaps best known for marketing the Gazelle in his fitness infomercials.  The Gazelle is not a treadmill, cross coutry ski machine, or elliptical trainer; rather, it is a “glider.”  To get a low-impact aerobic workout, Gazelle users glide their legs back and forth as seen in this iconic infomercial for Tony Little’s Gazelle:

However, Tony Little does so much more than the Gazelle.  In fact, he has more than 130 products ranging from exercise equipment such as the Gazelle, the Ab Lounger, and the X-Band Exerciser to Cheeks Footwear fit body shoes.  From pillows to bison meat, Tony Little sells just about anything designed to help his followers live a healthier life.

Tony Little has become such an infomercial legend that he has been featured on ABC News’ Nightline and Forbes Video.  The Forbes feature demonstrates how Tony Little has overcome adversity in order to build an infomercial fitness empire totaling more than $3 billion in product sales:

Nightline‘s in-depth feature looked at Tony Little from all angles, from his famous hair to this “best of Tony Little” montage:

Tony Little’s As Seen On TV exercise equipment makes his workouts look completely achievable.  Whereas the current trend in infomercial fitness is videos and equipment that look hard-core, Tony Little portrays his products as low-impact yet effective.  He encourages viewers through his trademark, “You can do it!”

What you can’t do, however, is get this picture out of your head:

You’re welcome.

We’ve talked recently on the SeenOnTV Express blog about ways to look slimmer with no effort (Kymaro Body Shaper for women and Slim T for men) and ways to improve muscle tone with little effort (Flex Belt and Flex Mini).  Though there are many As Seen On TV exercise videos and equipment that are low-impact and moderate intensity, perhaps the hottest selling infomercial exercise videos are the extreme workout routines from Beachbody.

Among the best selling Beachbody videos are Insanity with Shaun T. and Tony Horton’s P90X.  Recently, Shaun T. released a new version of his popular Insanity workout entitled The Asylum, a thirty-day sports training workout.  Now, Tony Horton and Beachbody are expanding their offerings for die-hard P90X fans with the release of P90X2.

P90X2 is more than just a new set of workouts to replace P90X; it is designed to build on the successful transformation of those who have completed P90X by increasing agility and athleticism.  P90X was created to transform bodies into the best shape of their lives, replacing fat with muscle through a technique of Muscle Confusion.  P90X2 continues with Muscle Confusion but also incorporates Post-Activation Potentiation (P.A.P.), a groundbreaking exercise technique based on two additional years of research and development by the fitness experts and sports scientists at Beachbody.

P.A.P. essentially combines heavy strength training with plyometric exercise to engage more muscles during and after a workout.  This explosive combination increases stamina, agility, core strength, and overall athleticism.  P90X2 is not designed as a replacement for the original P90X; it is not simply more of the same.  Rather, P90X2 takes fitness to the next level.

In this video, Tony Horton explains the difference between the original P90X and the all new P90X2:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubc1AQwSi1k

Because the P90X2 workouts are completely new and different from the previous series, new equipment may be necessary.  When you order the P90X2 workout kit, you have your choice of three packages, depending on what equipment needs you may have:

• P90X2 Base Kit:  12 workout DVDs, 1 How to Bring It Again DVD, P90X2 Workout Guide, P90X2 Nutrition Guide, P90X Workout Calendar
• P90X2 Deluxe Kit:  everything included in the Base Kit plus a foam roller, two 8-pound medicine balls, a premium stability ball, and two additional extreme workouts:  V-Sculpt and Chest + Shoulders + Tris
• P90X2 Ultimate Kit:  everything included in the Deluxe Kit plus Tony Horton’s PowerStands

The twelve P90X2 workouts use strength training, plyometrics, yoga, and core strength exercises and routines based on Muscle Confusion, but they incorporate P.A.P. to take your workout beyond the original transformation of P90X and into increased athletic ability, stamina, strength, and agility.  P90X2 workouts include:

• X2 Core
• Plyocide
• X2 Recovery + Mobility
• X2 Total Body
• X2 Yoga
• X2 Balance + Power
• Chest + Back + Balance
• X2 Shoulders + Arms
• Base + Back
• P.A.P. Upper
• P.A.P Lower
• X2 Ab Ripper

Staff members at SeenOnTV Express who have used the original P90X saw phenomenal results with the original program and look to build on their efforts with the all new P90X2.

Look out now.  SeenOnTV Express is going to be too hot to handle and too fast to catch . . .