Most Unhinged Infomercial

Late night television sold every one of these to real people in real numbers, which is the part that keeps the bracket from being merely funny.

The form has a grammar, and once you see it you cannot stop seeing it. Establish a problem nobody actually had.

Demonstrate the failure of an existing tool in an implausibly dramatic way, usually involving spillage. Introduce the product, repeat the price three separate times, then add a second unit for free at the last possible moment. Vince Offer sold both the ShamWow and the Slap Chop with the same escalating delivery, and the reason each worked is that the energy is as much the product as the plastic ever was.

The bracket is forty-four pitches wide, spanning genuinely useful household items through to things that should never have been greenlit by anybody at any stage.

Several of these made enormous amounts of money and several are simply baffling. The bracket draws no distinction between the two, so picking a winner means quietly deciding whether you are judging the product or the performance selling it.