The Snuggie. Can any marginally-useful product peddled on late night TV ever match its success? The infomercial for the blanket with sleeves known as the Snuggie has got to be one of the most ridiculed pieces of television ever produced – the parody advertising the “what the f$#@ blanket” has more than 13 million views.
But the Snuggie is also the only infomercial product that we’ve known ordinary people to actually purchase. And now, the makers of Snuggie are soliciting videos in an attempt to capitalize on the running joke.
The Snuggie has been riffed on by talk show host Ellen DeGeneres (“Isn’t this attractive?”) and lampooned on the sitcom 30 Rock (as the “Slanket”). A search for “snuggie parody” on YouTube yields 1,440 results.
It’s hard to know what inspired such comedy at the expense of the Snuggie. Perhaps it was the commercial’s placement on the Comedy Central network; possibly it was that the ad epitomized the infomercial art form, known best for melodrama, bad acting and cheap production, all to glorify an item or device that pushes the boundaries of uselessness so far that the factory workers who assembled it in China are probably still laughing.
Most of the most-popular Snuggie parodies are pretty derisive. Parodies on YouTube describe the Snuggie as “ridiculous,” “stupid,” and “big ridiculous stupid piece of crap” and run from the profane to the merely clever: “We’ve all heard of the ‘Snuggie,’ but now there is a new product called ‘Blanket!’ It’s a ‘Snuggie’ without holes!”
But Allstar Products Group, which makes the Snuggie and other as-seen-on-TV products like the “Perfect Brownie Pan Set,” apparently thinks all this buzz is a good thing. The company grabbed some of the less-insulting parodies and posted them on the Snuggie Fan Club website, and it has announced the Snuggie Choice Film Awards – a request for “commercial, short film, documentary or parody” videos.
The winner will receive $5,000, a trip to New York City and maybe even the opportunity to produce or appear in a real Snuggie-brand commercial for 2011.
The Snuggie has a Facebook page and Twitter account, and the Snuggie Fan Club site lets you create and share an image of a friend wrapped up on a Snuggie.
Could social media become an effective way to sell odd products like the Snuggie, the Shamwow and other items traditionally marketed to insomniacs by bad actors, cheap production and a warning to “CALL NOW”?
A Snuggie infomercial parody posted on YouTube, now reposted on an official Snuggie website.
