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Replies to post #32616 on Kronos Advanced Technologies (KNOS)
In 1949, Vitamix founder William G. "Papa" Barnard created the first infomercial in the U.S. to demonstrate how the Vitamix blender can help families eat healthier with whole foods.
Hey guys! This is my grandpa - for real! I love him to pieces! He was a super "pitchman". He spent his whole life demonstrating little gadgets at fairs and home shows. The Vita Mix was the first really big item he demonstrated. My dad had to convince him to buy TV time. It was super cheap - TV was so new, they didn't know how to fill up all the time! My Grandpa did not want to go on TV, he didn't think anything would come of it, but as soon as he went on, the phone was ringing off the wall with orders and my dad was the only one answering it and he had nothing to write on - just scraps of paper - they sold tons of Vita Mixes that very first day. My dad was a super salesman too and spent his life selling Vita Mixes and creating bigger and better ones. I spent my summers passing out samples at fairs. (I don't like being around fairs much anymore for some reason.)
His son, Ronald Popeil (b. 1935) started working in his factory at just 13. By 17, he started his own business selling his father’s gadgets, despite the two having a poor relationship. Ron quickly became a top salesman, making over $500 a day in his late teens. By 1958, he began selling his father’s inventions on television, starting with the “Chop-O-Matic”. With his novel – and now classic – sales pitches (“But wait, there’s more!” and “If you order now…”) the Chop-O-Matic quickly sold over 2 million units. (Click here to see Ron Popeil’s 1959 Chop-O-Matic commercial.)
Quote:Veg-O-Matic
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Veg-O-Matic is the name of one of the first food-processing appliances to gain widespread use in the United States.[1][2] It was non-electric and invented by Samuel J. Popeil[3] and later sold by his son, Ron Popeil[4] along with more than 20 other distributors across the country, and Ronco, making its début in 1963 at the International Housewares Show in Chicago, Illinois. It was also sold in Australia by Philip Kives, who purchased it from Samuel Popeil and sold it as one of the first products through his own marketing firm, K-tel.[5]
Made famous by saturation television advertising in the mid- and late 1960s, Veg-O-Matic is a manually operated food slicer, primarily made of injection-molded plastic, which held two sets of parallel cutting blades.[1] The Veg-O-Matic is shaped approximately like an upper-case letter "H" and had an integral operating handle. The item to be cut, such as a potato, is placed on the top set of blades, and then is pushed vertically down through the blades by the handle, while the user's hands are kept safely away from the cutter by the shape of the handle.[4]
The steel cutting blades are contained in a circular, cast-metal holder several inches in diameter. By rotating the top holder, the blades could cut flat slices or square strips, such as for French fries. By putting the slices through the machine a second time, they would be diced into small cubes. In the ads, Popeil would rapidly demonstrate this, with the now well-known catchphrase "It slices! It dices!" Sales were nearly exclusively via direct marketing,[2] and Veg-O-Matic was one of the first products (if not the first) to bear the red-and-white "As Seen on TV" logo on the box.[
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