| Craptastics

Fix-A-Flop Flip Flop Fixer: Fabulous or Futile?

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Frugal or Feckless?

My first thought when I saw this ad for Fix-A-Flop was, "I'm pretty poor, but I still like to think I have enough money that when my flip flops break, I can just throw them away and buy a new pair." But my second thought was, "It's always better to fix something than throw it away!"

I'm of two minds about these. They are designed for the type of super cheap flip flop where the toe thong is attached through a hole in the sole, with a simple button at the end. This type of flip flop, you get about ten days of use before the button wears through the sole around it (as it will do, what with both friction and cheap foam rubber being what they are) and pops out.

Insta-Hang | Not Gonna Do It

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I was chatting with my pilates instructor when she said, “Gee! You’ve done everything.” I never realized it before, but I have done a lot of different jobs and worn many hats. One of them, that I still love and could do in a heartbeat, was framing pictures. I worked at an art gallery/ frame shop both in sales as well as production. Meaning, I stood in the back and framed pictures for hours on end. It was fun. I learned to cut mats and assemble the wood frames as well. In fact, I could do everything, from cutting the glass to trimming the dust cover, in under 15 minutes. I was goooooood!

The Flexseal Screen Door Boat

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Why can't I look away?

I have seen many late-night ads for Flexseal, and one thing always stops me dead: the screen door boat. This is one of the most brilliant bits of commercial showmanship on the air today. I'm willing to bet there are kids today who will remember the Flexseal screen door boat decades from now, the way we old folk remember 80s ads like "Where's the beef?"

Flexseal is a sort of aerosolized rubber. It sprays on like spray paint, and hardens to create a seal which is famously waterproof. The ad shows people using Flexseal on ordinary things like cracked plant pots and leaky gutters.

Facial Flex | Why, Why, Why?!

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It seems all our posts here leave us wondering why? Why would someone invent this? Why would an investor spend money to bring it to market? Why would anyone in their right mind purchase it? And, then we see videos of people like Lisa Robertson “modeling” this particular product on air at QVC and we are left wondering, “Why on earth would she volunteer to do that on national television?” Better yet, why on earth would she do it knowing that it can be seen forever with the assistance of YouTube?

No Toy Ads Before Movies!

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If this is the newest trend, we’re going to have to start skipping previews.

And I love previews, so that sucks. But if crap like this is going to be advertized before the movie or the previews begin, you can count us out. Last night my best friend and I took our daughters to go see The Lorax. While our kids loved the movie—and what kid wouldn’t, with its bright colors and big song numbers?—the two of us had some real issues with it. But that’s another post.

Twiggy the Waterskiing Squirrel | Um, Why?

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No, seriously... why?

I was digging around online, trying to see what was going on in the area the next few weekends when I came across the Michigan Home and Garden Show. Yea. It's always fun to get out of the snow and experience spring just a little bit early, right? I was excited. Images of forsythia and lilacs danced in my head. I was daydreaming about patio stone styles and wistfully thinking about Trex decking products when I saw that Twiggy the Waterskiing Squirrel would be performing.

Bumpits – Add Volume to your Hair

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Have you seen the ads for these items where you add these plastic pieces with a bunch of bumps into your hair to help you get more volume. The idea is that you lift the hair, place the Bumpit! on your scalp, and then place the hair on top. It gives the allusion that you have more hair than you do and you have this amazing volume that others are envious of!

These are advertised as the thing that you need if you want to be able to create some of the hairdo’s of the past as they require you to have about five heads worth of hair to get the desired look. Instead, you can just stick these in and you will be rocking that look in no time indeed. You can also get them in different colours so it will blend in with the rest of your hair and no one will ever suspect that you did not grow another few heads worth of hair since you last saw them.

Eggies | Do You Really Need Help Boiling an Egg?

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Another "As Seen On TV" Winner

My cousin posted a FaceBook update that read, “Used my Eggies for the first time. What a perfect hard-boiled egg!!!!!!” So, of course, I had to check it out. My first thought was microwave eggs, which is gross just to think about. First impressions are not always right though. Eggies are boiled in water, just like regular hard-boiled eggs. The twist is that you crack the eggs into the plastic Eggies containers, seal and then plop the container in the boiling water. The benefit, according to the manufacturers, is that you do not need to “spend hours peeling” the shells off. Really? Hours? I never knew it took that long. Oh, wait. It doesn’t.

Cami Secret – What Secret are you hiding?

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Do you have tops that you know would be great for the office if it wasn’t for the front going down too far and showing off cleavage? I know that I have tonnes of these in my wardrobe because bar star clothing only has one issue in it when it comes to the office – cleavage!

Enter the Cami Secret! It’s a piece of fabric designed to look like a camisole that you insert in the front of the low cut shirt and attach to the bra straps, and voila, bar clothing is now office appropriate! What a great way to increase your wardrobe by only spending a few dollars on this great option!

While I could see this working well for shirts that are maybe just a tad too low, but if that shirt is quite a bit too low, like belly button low? You are going to need to attach a few Cami Secrets to cover up all that extra skin! And that is going to just look silly and foolish and your co-workers are going to wonder about the wisdom of wearing that shirt to work before or after you attach the fabric

Project 77

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Predatory Christianity, A.K.A. "Adopt A Jew"

I usually stay away from the religious stuff, because it's all so earnestly wacky, it doesn't really count as a crappy infomercial or consumer product. It's like its own thing, you know? But I just couldn't give a pass to Project 77, which may be one of the most insulting, if not outright reprehensible, things I have seen advertised on television.

I stumbled across the Project 77 infomercial in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, which is when the Discovery Channel gets religion. It's usually four hours of Joel Osteen or whatever, but this Sunday it was something very different. It was a half-hour infomercial for a product that can essentially be described as "Adopt an African child, but it's a Jewish person, and you're trying to convert them to Christianity."

I'll just pause here for a moment to let you digest that tidbit.

Read more about Project 77

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