Every Thursday is Goat-Free Simplicity day at Living Behind the Curve.

Infomercials are sort of awesome. Admit it, every once in a while, when you’re drunk or tired or the level of cynicism in your blood is a little low, it’s damned entertaining to watch loud men cut through soda cans with table knives. They appeal to our basest instincts on purpose — if the sparkling, 1 dimensional entertainment doesn’t suck you in, it’s hard not to gloat a little at the morons the advertisers insist exist that can’t seem to accomplish simple tasks without this amazing new invention. They promise that this revolution will free up hours of time every day you never knew you wasted, which you can now use to become wealthy and powerful. More than anything else, these spokespeople insist that the solution is simple, and using it will simplify your life.

I was planning on carefully examining these specious claims as a group and speculating on why they keep advertising and we keep buying, but I think it’ll be more fun just to mock the extreme examples on one of my favorite websites ever, AsSeenOnTV.com. Why don’t we take a stroll through the common themes in infomercial-land, shall we?

We’ll kick off with one of my favorites, Solving An Absurd Problem You Didn’t Know You Had: the Bug Zapper. The Bug Zapper is a small battery-powered tennis racket, and works on the theory that if you can’t swat a fly when it’s stationary, you might have better luck electrifying the little bastard in mid-air while it orbits your light fixtures at mach 2. There are two buttons on the handle to push, and a little red success light for safety’s sake — touching the electrified wires is not entirely unlike licking the contacts of a nine-volt battery. I have no idea whether this thing actually works for extermination or not, because while I actually know quite a few people who own Bug Zappers, all of the people I know use them as sex toys.

Here’s a good example of the Duct-Tape Method (take two or three common objects, and stick them together), the Breakfast Maker 3 in 1. If you don’t click on any other link, click on this one. Here, we have a hotplate-like device on top of a toaster oven, all connected to a coffeemaker. I’m not entirely sure where to start with this one. The hotplate, and the rest of it, is nestled in cheap plastic, and unless the device is going to set itself on fire, it won’t get hot enough to fry eggs. The coffeepot is 3 cups big, and it’s kind of hard to see why they bothered with a glass pot to brew a single venti. And if you look, the toaster oven in just big enough to toast the tiniest little sausage and egg on cheese bagel ever! This thing is tiny and guaranteed to either not get hot enough to do anything, or it’s a dorm fire waiting to happen. Which do you think it is?

This one is a Product Twin, Only Less So. For the price of a George Foreman Grill, you can get a Micro Grill, a chunk of metal and/or plastic to stick in your microwave and sear less food than you could on a George Foreman Grill, all while “block[ing] the microwaves from penetrating your food (sic)”. Brilliant.

And finally, in the For The Idiot Who Has Everything category, I present to you the $30 Electric Ice Cream Scoop. I couldn’t be funnier than the ad copy on this thing, so I’m not even gunna try:

Finally, no more struggling to scoop your ice cream! The Deni Ice Cream Scoop cuts through the hardest ice cream with no effort. The scoop heats up in minutes and retains its temperature scoop after scoop. The specially designed electric ice cream scoop allows you to reach those hard to reach corners to get every last drop of your favorite ice cream.

Features

• Heats up in minutes
• Ergonomically designed with a comfort grip
• Drip guard keeps hands and fingers away from ice cream
• Specially designed scoop for those hard to reach corners
• Curls a perfect scoop with minimal effort
• Special non-stick coating for easy cleaning
• Easy as 1,2,3: Plug in heat up, scoop ice cream

Comedy gold, I tell you.

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OK, that was fun. Incidentally, I found a really fascinating article on class and internet design on graphpaper.com, what looks like a hopelessly intellectual design blog that I just subscribed to. Part three directly addresses class issues inherent in infomercial marketing, and if you’re at all interested in sociology or class issues like me, go read it, cuz it’s neat.