Ron Popeil obit

Ron Popeil, Infomercial Tycoon, Dies At 86

The inventor of the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ was famous for his sayings “Set it, and forget it!” and “But wait, there’s more!”

 

 He was not on the list.

Ron Popeil, the legendary infomercial personality and inventor, died Wednesday morning, his family told TMZ. He was 86.

Popeil suffered a medical emergency on Tuesday and was taken to Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Popeil was born in New York in 1935, and became the face of television marketing in the mid-1950s through his Ronco products, like the Chop-O-Matic, the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ, the Pocket Fisherman, Mr. Microphone and Hair in a Can.

Popeil may have been best known for his even more popular catchphrases, including “Set it, and forget it!” and “But wait, there’s more!”

His website touts that throughout his career, he’s “been on more television channels for more hours in more markets for more years than virtually all other celebrities in American television history.”

In 1993, the TV icon won the IG Nobel Prize in consumer engineering ― a satirical award that celebrates odd or trivial achievements.

Popeil is noted for marketing and in some cases inventing a wide variety of products. Among the better known and more successful are the Chop-O-Matic hand food processor ("Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to show you the greatest kitchen appliance ever made ... All your onions chopped to perfection without shedding a single tear."), the Dial-O-Matic successor to the Veg-O-Matic ("Slice a tomato so thin it only has one side."), and the Ronco Pocket Fisherman. Popeil is also well known for his housewares inventions like his Giant Dehydrator and Beef Jerky Machine, his Electric Pasta Maker and his Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ. His Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ sold over eight million units in the US alone, helping Ronco's housewares sales exceed $1 billion in profits. After retiring, Popeil continued to invent products including the 5in1 Turkey Fryer & Food Cooking System which he had been developing for over ten years.

Popeil's success in infomercials, memorable marketing personality, and ubiquity on American television have allowed him and his products to appear in a variety of popular media environments including cameo appearances on television shows such as The X-Files, Futurama, King of the Hill, The Simpsons,[f] Sex and the City, The Daily Show and The West Wing. Parodies of Popeil's infomercials were done on the comedy show Saturday Night Live by Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy and the "Veg-O-Matic" may have provided comedian Gallagher inspiration for the "Sledge-O-Matic" routine since the 1980s. The animated series "VeggieTales" once featured a parody of the "Veg-O-Matic" dubbed as the "Forgive-O-Matic". "Additionally, the professional wrestling tag team The Midnight Express dubbed their finishing move the Veg-O-Matic.

Popeil was voted by Self magazine readers as one of the 25 people who have changed the way we eat, drink and think about food.

Popeil has been referenced in the music of Alice Cooper, the Beastie Boys, and "Weird Al" Yankovic. Yankovic's song "Mr. Popeil" was a tribute to Popeil's father, Samuel (and featured his sister Lisa Popeil on backing vocals). Ron Popeil later used this song in some of his infomercials.

In Malcolm Gladwell's book What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, Popeil is interviewed and many of his products, most notably the Veg-O-Matic and Showtime Rotisserie, are discussed. Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker piece "The Pitchman" about Popeil won Gladwell the 2001 National Magazine award. The article was first published in The New Yorker in 2000.