On Four Easy Payments of Just $19.99

I think about cable TV way too often for someone of my generation. Maybe, it’s because I come from a family that made a career in Sitcoms. Maybe, it’s because it harkens me back to an era where all of life’s problems could be solved in half an hour and everything went back to how it was. Maybe, it’s because there was a certain level of magical mystery to flipping between channels and having NO idea what you were going to stumble upon: your new favorite show, yet another documentary about Hitler and WWII, a rated-R movie you definitely weren’t allowed to watch, or maybe, just maybe, when it was late at night and no one was awake…you would end up turning on a channel that would change your life…a channel where two dudes from the Midwest try to sell you 126 knives for four easy payments of $19.99.

Thinking about infomercials now feels so wild in a world of ads on every website, every social media post, and every influencer’s bio, but back in the day, I spent WAY too much time between the hours of 1 am and 3 am watching The Knife Show aka “Cutlery Corner.” This quaint infomercial was hosted by Sheila Travis, Todd Boone, and Tom O’Dell and was like a buffet for my teenage eyes which, for some reason, yearned for anything sharp with the word “tactical” attached to it. They sold the most insane products you’d ever seen, the most impractical knives you’d ever imagined, and the stupidest bundles you’d ever heard of.

You could get a thirteen-piece set complete with ten bowie knives, each over a foot long, a sword straight off the cover of a 1980s heavy metal album, and a Zweihander that would make even the most masculine anime hero blush… all for the low low price of two “flex” payments of $99.99. I, a boy of maybe 12 years old, would sit in the living room in the pitch black, mouth agape because suddenly I needed a sword bigger than I was more than I needed air. What would I do with it? Vanquish my enemies of course. Would I even be able to lift it? Probably not, but that’s what training montages are for. Did I have a credit card? Thank God, I did not because I would have plunged myself into the deepest debt known to mankind by amassing an arsenal of cheap swords and knives that would almost certainly break at the slightest exertion of force.

I haven’t flipped on an infomercial in probably fifteen years at this point and a part of me feels like that is the real death of childhood, because I know now, in my heart of hearts, that since I could order as many swords and knives as a teenage me would have wanted to…I just don’t really care to. Don’t get me wrong, anytime I’m in a store that sells knives I still stand over that case with a childish glint in my eye as I think about how cool I would be if I just bought that unnecessarily large knife…then I go back to buying socks or underwear or whatever.

Do you have any intense memories of watching infomercials and wanting their products SO bad?