Where Every Odd Gizmo Has a Chance to Shine

Imagine a utopian world where everyone has flatter abdomens, shinier cars and reverse-polarity teeth.

Also, the entire planet knows how to dance the Macarena!

Sound too good to be true? Then step inside the Las Vegas Convention Center, where all this and more is just an 800 (or 900) number away. It’s the National Infomercial Marketing Assn.’s annual trade expo and awards show.

And it’s a dangerous place to be carrying a credit card, what with the wall-to-wall sales pitches for miracle golf clubs, microwave potato-chip makers and a device that changes a telephone ring to the moo of a cow.

The conference, which ended Thursday, tried vainly to make a case for the industry’s growing respectability.

Vice presidential hopeful Jack Kemp gave a keynote address Tuesday (via videotape). And NIMA officials pointed out the increased presence of mainstream corporations in the field, including Lexus, Blockbuster Music and even groups such as the Nature Conservancy and Scientology.

Still, it’s hard to get overly serious about a business dominated by psychic hotlines and something called “the Ab Wars.” At the convention, there seemed to be no end to the number of products designed to buff up abdominal muscles: Abflex, Ab Trainer, Ab Coach, AB Answer, Power Abs, Ab Shaper, Ab XTC, Ab Sculptor and EZ Krunch, to name just some.

To sort them all out, confused consumers might need divine intervention. During the “Infomercial Emmys” ceremony Wednesday night, when Ab Roller Plus hostess Brenda Dygraff was named best female infomercial presenter of 1996, she thanked Jesus Christ, her “Lord and savior, because without Him I would be nothing.”

Does this mean Jesus would use the Ab Roller Plus? The Bible is silent on the issue, but Dygraff’s tummy toughener did take best product honors.

The big winner of the evening, however, was self-help huckster Tony Robbins, with six awards including best infomercial of the year.

Robbins was off in Fiji, where he is rumored to own an actual island, so he wasn’t able to accept his trophies, which are made of Lucite acrylic. (Perhaps a more fitting tribute to infomercial winners would be a gold-plated Veg-O-Matic.)

Maybe next year, the awards ceremony won’t miss the most fascinating and amusing products. Like What-a-Saw, “the only saw you’ll ever need” because it’s three saws in one--a hacksaw, a bow saw and a utility saw.

Or the NASA mattress. “Eight is Enough” star Dick Van Patten will soon hit the airwaves as celebrity spokesman for a $1,500 bed made with “NASA developed ThermalFoam,” the same substance used on chairs in the space shuttle.

And if that doesn’t help you fall asleep, visit former baseball player/gambler Pete Rose signing autographs for conventioneers and promoting his product--a slumber-inducing melatonin spray.

Other odd gizmos include Cycle Check, a lipstick-sized device from Japan that allegedly monitors ovulation by analyzing saliva; AromaSlim, a scented wand whose odor is said to squelch cravings for fatty foods; and the Ionic Toothbrush, which claims to repel plaque by changing the polarity of a person’s teeth.

There’s also Michael J. Logan of Newport Beach with his White Wizard spot remover and a car seat smeared with motor oil, shoe polish and molasses (we can’t tell you how many times we’ve spilled those three substances while driving to work!). Logan says his product is so good, it’ll even take the spots off a leopard. Then he rewinds a VCR playing his infomercial until it shows a humorously doctored scene of a leopard being, uh, White Wizardized.

It’s impossible to list even a fraction of the bizarre products on display here: cop-chase and Macarena videos, an aphrodisiac called Poder Sexual (aimed at Latinos), vitamins endorsed by actor Erik Estrada, sunglasses that purport to give people “eagle vision,” flesh-toned rubber bra fillers (which men and women kept groping when no one seemed to be looking) and--of course--that car polish where the guy sets the hood of a Rolls Royce on fire.

Go ahead and laugh, but the stuff sells. Infomercial revenues topped $1 billion last year, according to NIMA. And that’s just the beginning. The industry’s collective reversed-polarized mouth is already watering at future prospects. For instance, NIMA President Charlie Bray says TV viewers will soon be able to watch a show such as “Seinfeld” and, if they like a character’s coat, they’ll be able to aim a remote control beam at it, click a button and have it automatically shipped to their home.

“You can just sit in your armchair and you won’t even have to pick up the phone,” he says.

Another gold mine is the foreign market. Jackie Lapin, a publicist for Williams Worldwide, says abdomen exercisers are opening all kinds of doors overseas: “It’s the one thing that seems universal. Everyone wants a flat tummy.”

But sometimes the infomercials don’t translate well. In one Asian market, sales for an ab machine plunged after a home shopping show host mistakenly placed the device in his crotch and was seen grimacing in pain.

There was also talk here of Internet infomercials and 24-hour infomercial channels (although the JW Greensheet reports that there may be competition for space from such planned cable stations as--seriously--the Sewing and Needle Arts Network, and CHOP TV, a martial arts channel).

To mark the industry’s rising fortunes, the 1996 convention included the first inductees to the $100 Million Club, which honors entrepreneurs who have earned that sum from a single show.

The chosen few: infomercial pioneer Ron Popeil (for his Ronco food dehydrator and his pasta maker), self-help guru Robbins, “Amazing Discoveries” host Mike Levey, A.J. Khubani (Ambervision sunglasses) and Sonny Howard, a one-time singer on the “Ed Sullivan Show” and former writer for “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” who now hawks Duralube engine treatment.

Other convention highlights included a day of seminars that could have taken a few cues from infomercials themselves--applause signs, strapping the stiff panelists in abdomen devices or setting something on fire.

All in all, this infomercial madness proved pretty frightening. But it could have been worse. Down the street at the Desert Inn, in concert: Neil Sedaka.