A Very Special Episode - Turbo Cooker Plus infomercial

[Ubiquitous]

by Noel Murray

Sometimes a single TV episode can exemplify the spirit of its time and
the properties that make television a unique medium. A Very Special
Episode presents The A.V. Club’s survey of TV at its most distinctive.

I have a bad history with salesmen. When I was a freshman in college, I
went to a cookware demonstration in a friend’s dorm, looking for free
food, and by the end of the night I’d spent almost $200 on pots and
pans. A few years later, I accompanied a buddy when he went to take a
quick look at a car and ended up sitting for over an hour inside the
dealership while my friend explained repeatedly that he couldn’t afford
to buy anything and the salesman ignored him and kept “crunching the
numbers.” Over the years, I’ve become so resistant to any kind of sales
pressure that whenever I call about work we need done on our house, I
always make it clear that all I want is a list of options and a
price-quote. If anybody in a suit walks in and starts asking questions
like, “Mr. Murray, if you could save 15 percent on your heating bills,
wouldn’t you agree that was a good deal?” I shake his hand and show him
to the door. I’m not exaggerating. I’ve done that at least twice just in
the past five years.

And yet if I watch even one minute of an infomercial on TV, I tend to
watch it all the way through. Intently, too. Infomercials aren’t neutral
programming to me. They’re not something I can keep on in the background
for white noise while I get some work done. As soon as I hear some
schmoe-on-the-street talking about how he turned his life around thanks
to a new diet program, or no-money-down real estate, or the porcelain
kitty-cat figurines he sells at county fairs, I can’t help myself. I
stick around for the payoff.

I’m not alone in this, I know. Whether we watch infomercials because
we’re genuinely interested in the product or because we think it’s funny
to see how shameless advertisers can be, the hook of the program itself
remains the same. There’s a rhythm and a style to infomercials that can
make a half-hour pitch go by in an eye-blink. Semi-celebrities and
veteran hawkers alike use methods honed on the boardwalks and in the
mercantile districts during the early industrial age, when salesmen
first learned the art of the demonstration, the limited supply, the
one-time-only special offer, and “the turn,” where they go from making
their product sound indispensable to asking for the crowd to open their
pocketbooks.

Remy Stern’s 2009 book But Wait… There’s More! covers the history of the
infomercial, from the 1984 deregulation that allowed TV stations to sell
blocks of airtime to advertisers to the outsized personalities both
behind and in front of the cameras (and, inevitably, to the series of
scandals that has at times threatened to shut the whole circus down).
Stern opens with a pivotal figure: Ron Popeil, the scion of a whole
family of inventors/salesmen, who first came to prominence in the ’60s
with his commercials for the Veg-O-Matic. Popeil later took advantage of
the infomercial age to sell his Showtime Rotisserie countertop cooker
with ads that had him showing a studio audience all the different ways
that this machine could cook a worry-free meal. All users had to do was
pop in their roast, set the timer, and go on about their day. “Set it,
and forget it.”

Stern also writes in But Wait about the infomercial industry’s habit of
cannibalizing itself. When one company comes up with a successful
product and/or pitch, other companies look for something similar that
they can rush to market, to siphon off customers. And so the dead hours
of the night and early morning are filled with competing ads for sleeved
blankets, spot-removers, and decorating kits.

Or cookers.



Out of all the infomercials I’ve seen over the years, the ones I’ve most
often stuck around to watch are the pitches for the cookers: the
Showtime Rotisserie, the Turbo Cooker, the FlavorWave Oven. I find
get-rich-quick and get-thin-quick ads too depressing. (Though I did
enjoy the “stop being a lame-o and start puttering around in motorboats
with sexy ladies” spiel of Tom Vu in the early ’90s). Cooker ads, on the
other hand, are more benign. Following the concept popularized by
Popeil, the typical 30-minute ad for a kitchen gadget has two people
standing around a crowded countertop, cooking meal after meal with a
level of ease and creativity that’s entertaining in and of itself. It’s
like watching a Food Network show on hyperdrive. Rather than Rachael Ray
preparing three dishes in a half-hour, we see two relative unknowns
preparing 15 or 20 dishes, rarely pausing to catch a breath.

Ron Popeil’s rotisserie infomercial began airing in 1998, and the
Showtime Rotisserie quickly became one of the best-selling products in
the history of televised marketing. In 2000, infomercial producers
Stanley Jacobs Productions hooked up with the GT Merchandising &
Licensing Corporation and chef/inventor Randall Cornfeld to pitch the
Turbo Cooker, a device that can “steam-fry” a three-course meal in
minutes, primarily by following the basic principles of a
pressure-cooker and adding stackable trays. In 2002, the same team
returned—represented again by infomercial host Joe Fowler and homey cook
Cathy Mitchell—to sell the Turbo Cooker Plus, which added another tray
and a portable timer. Their slogan? “When you turbo-time it, you don’t
have to mind it.” Sound familiar?


In his 1970 advertising-world exposé Down The Tube, one-time ad-man
Terry Galanoy describes the different psychological principles that the
makers of TV commercials have banked on in the past, including the
none-too-subtle appeal of the direct address:

Bill the Bartender would talk directly to the camera; the director was
employing what is known as subjective camera technique, which is based
on the assumption that the viewer will feel more involved if the action
is directed straight at him with no middle man to get in the way. (The
theory stinks. The technique was used by Robert Montgomery in Lady In
The Lake, and it made the plot and the audience disappear.)

Over the years, infomercial producers have tried different gimmicks to
hook viewers, usually by making their ads look like real TV programs: a
fake talk show, a fake call-in show, a show about “amazing inventions,”
et cetera. The Turbo Cooker Plus ad looks like a cooking show. After Joe
Fowler and Cathy Mitchell greet each other like old friends, Joe asks
Cathy what she’s going to be making for us today, and she launches into
her whirlwind Turbo-Cooking session. The viewing audience at home gets a
nod up top and occasionally in passing, but mainly we’re made to feel as
if were peeking in at two acquaintances who haven’t seen each other
since the Turbo Cooker commercial, and who are now catching up with each
other via the latest recipes and cooking techniques. Unlike the Showtime
Rotisserie ads, which feature a studio audience, Joe and Cathy only have
each other and a brief cameo by “Chef Randall.” It’s all so intimate.


Throughout the demonstration, Joe and Cathy never mention the price of
the product. Instead, following the typical structure of a cooking show,
they break periodically for a commercial, which just happens to be an ad
for the Turbo Cooker Plus. The commercial repeats almost verbatim
throughout the half-hour, though it adds some detail and information
each time. We learn more about how the steam cooks the food…



… and we find out about the bonus recipe cards and racks that will be
coming our way if we order now. (This doesn’t happen in the Turbo Cooker
Plus ad, but with other infomercials, the throw-in items are often
products that used to be featured in their own infomercials. Et tu,
Miracle Chopper?) Finally, the announcer explains that we can get the
Turbo Cooker Plus for three easy payments of $29.95, but that if we
order in the next hour, we’ll only have to make two payments. In Remy
Stern’s But Wait, he tries to get to the bottom of the pricing and
timing of infomercial “special offers,” and as you’d probably expect,
none of these deals really expire after one hour, and none of these
products costs more than the price of that first payment.

In between the Joe and Cathy segments and the commercial segments, the
Turbo Cooker Plus ad fills space with testimonials from satisfied
customers. Almost as much as the food, it’s the testimonials that draw
me into ads like these. Either the casting agents and location scouts at
Stanley Jacobs Productions are exceptionally good at their jobs, or
they’ve tracked down actual Turbo Cooker fans. But the commercial’s
little glimpses into ordinary people’s lives—even fake ordinary
people—helps sell the story that this is a product that works. Does it
work? I’ve read as many customer reviews as I could find of the Turbo
Cooker and the Turbo Cooker Plus, and found them about evenly split
between “This does what it promises!” “This is a cheap piece of crap
that broke the first time I used it!” and “This works pretty well but
you have to a lot more pre-cooking than they say in the commercial.”
Whatever the truth, it makes for a convincing anecdote when a husband
and wife tell the story of how he insisted on broiling his steak while
she turbo-cooked hers.


The real question, though—more than whether the ad is persuasive or
accurate—is whether it’s entertaining. In Down The Tube, Galnoy writes,
“It used to take a minute to do a commercial successfully, then 40
seconds. Today, the average commercial with a full story is 30 seconds,
and, before long, the 10-second commercial will be the complete
communication.” He wasn’t wrong about that; ads are more compressed in
some time-slots, and some ads are even designed so that a 30-second spot
can reach someone who’s fast-forwarding through it in less than five
seconds. And yet people still sit through half-hour infomercials, even
when they have no intention of buying. Why?

In the case of the Turbo Cooker Plus ad, a large part of the appeal is
the fantasy of owning a device that will allow a busy head-of-household
to make a wide variety of healthy, delicious meals with a minimum of
preparation. It’s like one of those old cartoons that imagined what “the
home of the future” would be like. Now here, at last: our own
foodarackacycle.

And then there’s the food itself, which Joe and Cathy transform in
classic cooking-show fashion. They toss dry pasta, frozen meatballs,
jarred sauce, and a tray of cold peas into one cooker; then they throw a
raw fish into a cooker with a pan of brownie-batter; then they drop
biscuit dough into cream-of-chicken soup. And then, minutes later, the
big reveal: The brownies don’t taste like fish! The dumplings are fully
cooked! (“And these were frozen! And this was frozen!” Joe says. “You’re
breaking all the rules!”) If the average cooking show traffics in “food
porn,” then the succession of low-cost, back-of-the-pantry meals
unveiled in the Turbo Cooker Plus ad are like three copies of Juggs
bundled together in a Valu-Pak.


As for the hosts, watching them carry themselves as though we should
already know who they are—and then later watching them bring out Chef
Randall for hearty congratulations, as though the whole world were
talking about his latest invention—is disconcerting. Granted, both
Fowler and Mitchell are quasi-familiar faces from other infomercials,
but it’s an odd experience to have them presented to us as actual famous
folk. The gambit of designing a commercial to be like a cooking show
keeps the viewer on familiar ground, but the framing of the hosts piques
our curiosity. Who are these people? If they’re behaving as though I
already know them, then maybe I should know them.

Once we’re intrigued, all Cathy has to do is to keep talking nonstop
about the meals she makes in the Turbo Cooker for her own family, and
all Joe has to do is interrupt occasionally to taste the food and moan
orgasmically while acting genuinely enthusiastic about the prospect of
recipe cards, healthy living, and flavor. (“I love spices!” he yelps.)


Frankly, it doesn’t take that much to overcome our skepticism. Most
Americans have been wired by our culture to consume. As much as we may
decry the commercialism of Christmas and complain about the hassles of
shopping for distant cousins, most of us do still like to buy. That’s
how salesmen find their way in. They ask the questions we can’t say “no”
to, and make it easier for us to do what they know we enjoy: spending
money. “Steam-frying,” you say? Less fat than the rotisserie? Saves
space? Easy to clean? It makes so much sense! And look at everything it
can do, from making breakfast to keeping desserts warm. As Stern writes
in But Wait, “Demonstrating multiple uses of the same product raises the
‘perceived value’ of the product as you internalize all the ways you
could possibly put the item to use.” Part of the fun of watching
infomercials is seeing how far the ads travel in that direction. What’s
the maximum amount of extras they can toss in? And how low can they drop
the price?



Sure, it’s just an act. But knowing that a presentation has been
designed to sway us doesn’t diminish the pleasure of being swayed. As
Stern also writes, by way of describing the craft and legacy of
pitchmen, “In the end, it’s just amusing to watch Chef Tony toss a
pineapple in the air and then slice it in two with a Miracle Blade
knife. People in Asbury Park gathered around to watch Arnold Morris cut
into a cement block, too. We enjoy being sold to.”

It’s hard to quibble with that. Pitching is a kind of performing art,
like stand-up comedy or dramatic recitation, and though its actual value
to society may be minimal (or even detrimental), the skill itself is
admirable. And it’s not the same as being pressured by a car salesman or
Pampered Chef hostess, because there’s a distance between the seller and
us. We can feel free to enjoy the show.

A few months ago, I was watching Turner Classic Movies on a late weekend
night when the channel aired “Delicious Dishes,” a short film that ran
in selected theaters in 1950. The film was designed to explain a
promotion the theaters were running at the time: giving away one piece
of cutlery each week to the ladies in attendance, and a complete set to
ladies who showed up for 12 weeks straight.


What I found remarkable when I watched “Delicious Dishes” was how
indistinguishable in structure and thrust in is from any modern “new
kitchen breakthrough” infomercial. Yes, there’s an anachronistic “how to
please your husband” tone, and yes, our host has a nasal voice not
unlike a carnival barker. But as he’s working magic with potatoes,
making suggestions for meals, and talking about how certain vegetable
cuts “will not absorb the fat,” he’s not so different from any other
pitchman making his product line look so innovative and reasonable that
we’d be fools not to buy. After all, his knives are versatile, handy,
and easy to clean. (They can probably even core a apple.) There’s
comfort in that kind of cultural continuity. People in 1950 surely hated
the hard sell as much as people do in 2010. And yet it’s hard to resist
when a man with a table, a knife, and a stack of food hollers, “Step
right up.”


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"If Barack Obama isn't careful, he will become the Jimmy Carter of the
21st century."