Pitchmen Makes A Comeback

The return of Pitchmen is something I've been waiting since it was abruptly early into season 2 and it is returning to the Discovery Channel on January 18th at 7:00pm est. If you remember, this was the first season after the untimely death of Billy Mays and in my opinion the show was terrific.

I'm really not much of a reality show guy but Pitchmen was different.  Here you had a bunch of inventors trying to get the corporate "know it alls" to take a gamble on bringing their product to market through infomercials.  We all love to hate those late night ads but you really find yourself rooting for the little guy in this show and you have a chance to watch their real life success and failures.

The first episode of the season featured the coolest product ever called Cold Fire which was super duper fire retardant in a can. The demo was spectacular with fireman, flames and plenty of wow!  This made great television and I was sure it would be good enough to command more airtime for the show, but I guess I was wrong. I was actually shocked that it disappeared with no notice because the Discovery Channel site was loaded with spoilers and featurettes on all the upcoming products.

Even though I though it would be hard to top the season premiere, I wanted to see episode 3 featuring the Fridge Locker because the trailers showed Anthony Sullivan on set with an 800lb bear and Sully looked scared.  The product was hilarious in it's own right and I really thought if I was going to buy a Pitchmen Product, the Fridge Locker would be it.  Not only is it kooky, but it is functional in the office.

People bring food to work and leave it in the fridge all the time, only to find it missing when they want to eat it.  We probably know who the culprits are in our office but it is hard to prove.  So the Fridge Locker is a locked food safe which hopefully we will see that not even a bear can infiltrate.  Another benefit is that at home parents can lock away foods that the kids shouldn't eat.  It's hard to monitor the intake of junk in our kids these days and at least if you lock it up you are sending a message that it is off limits.

Now the Fridge Locker episode was supposed to air months ago and in the meantime Ellen Degeneres got a hold of one and lampooned it on her show.  She actually said she would buy one after showed a clip of an alarm she had to install in the break room fridge to scare off food raiders.  She also made a funny skit featuring the Fridge Locker and sales starting increasing following Ellen's fun. 

So now that the actually story of how the Fridge Locker came to be is still featured on this upcoming episode, but I'm not going to feel the pressure for inventor Kevin Alan because I already know his product got picked.

Over the last months I have seen a few other cool products come out on the As Seen On TV Market that really interested me and low and behold a few were invented by, you guessed it, Kevin Alan.   That's like winning the lottery and then winning it again.  Kevin turned out to have so much ability creating products that solve every day problems in an easy way that Sully actually does his commercials now.  You may have seen the Grill Glove and the Couch Coozy already.

Now even before we see the "before they were famous" version of Kevin Alan on the 18th rumor has it that he as teamed up with MMA Trainer and Fox Sports personality Jay Glazer to help bring Jay's awesome new MMA Training System to market. It is called the perfect punch and I actually got to see the commercial on MTV's Bully Beatdown just yesterday.

I'm still interested to find out how Kevin got his start and hear his whole story.  Remember this is a pitch show so he had to figure out how to get the show's attention and get chosen to appear.  He had to go through all the emotion, frustration, glitches and grizzly bears we would all have to go for and his dream of being a successful inventor may be realized but only after the cliche' commercial break.  I hate that.

Another cool product called Shavemate is featured on this same episode.  It is a disposable razor that comes with shaving cream in the handle and pretty fancy blades which allows people to get a high quality shave without having to lug a long a can on a trip or the office.  There has been no foreshadowing on shavemate because Ellen didn't order one for a gag so we won't find out about the inventor until the 18th.

Regardless of who is on the show, what stupid inventions or maybe even a few good ones, the show is a brilliant what I call higher reality show.  Nobody is stuck on an island catching fish and running from bears for survival, well I know of at least one bear and some explosions so I may be wrong.  The point is that unlike most reality shows this isn't a survival game in the jungle, Kevin Allen is not going to have to dance at the judges and the razor guys are not going to have to figure out how to vote a bear out of the studio.  This show is about dreams and the chance to achieve them. Sure there is reward but it isn't a million dollars for standing on a pole longer than the other who is standing on the pole next to you, it is about the virtues of dreaming big, working hard, then working harder, making your own breaks and how not to let any possible failure take away anything from your journey.  This show turns people into successes and crushes the guts out of the ones that are not so lucky.

Now That's Television.  So watch The Fridge Locker episode that we have all had to wait 4 months to see and lets watch Sully work with a bear.  It'll be like having Billy Back.