Dead at 86, the exemplar for the directness of reality TV, informercials as direct marketing, and previous guy's hope for hair. Ron Popeil will disabuse those who begrudgingly call previous guy a branding “genius”.
Gadgeteer Ron Popeil, who was awarded the 1993 Ig Nobel Prize for consumer engineering, has died, according to press reports. The famed inventor was cited, in winning that Ig Nobel prize, for “redefining the industrial revolution with such devices as the Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman, Mr. Microphone, and the Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler.”
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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.[citation needed] After retiring, Popeil continued to invent products including the 5in1 Turkey Fryer & Food Cooking System which he had been[when?] developing for over ten years.
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