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Veg-O-Matic
Veg-O-Matic is the name of one of the first food-processing appliances to gain widespread use in the United States. It was non-electric and invented by Samuel J. Popeil and later sold by his son Ron Popeil along with more than 20 other distributors across the country, and Ronco, making its debut in 1963 at the International Housewares Show in Chicago, Illinois. It was also sold in Australia by Philip Kives, who purchased it from Samuel Popeil and sold it as one of the first products through his own marketing firm, K-tel. Made famous by saturation television advertising in the mid- and late 1960s, Veg-O-Matic is a manually operated food slicer, primarily made of injection-molded plastic, which held two sets of parallel cutting blades. The Veg-O-Matic is shaped approximately like an upper-case letter "H" and had an integral operating handle. The item to be cut, such as a potato, is placed on the top set of blades, and then is pushed vertically down through the blades by the handle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ron Popeil
Ronald Martin Popeil (; May 3, 1935 – July 28, 2021), was an American inventor and marketing personality, and founder of the direct response marketing company Ronco. He made appearances in infomercials for the Showtime Rotisserie and coined the phrase "Set it, and forget it!" as well as popularizing the phrase, "But wait, there's more!" on television as early as the mid-1950s. Personal life and career Popeil was born to a Jewish familyInterfaith Families: "Interfaith Celebrities: Why Pink is a Mixed Bag" By Nate Bloom. 2015 in Manhattan in 1935, the son of Julia (Schwartz) and Samuel Popeil. When he was six, his parents divorced and he and his brother went to live in Florida with their grandparents. At age 17 in 1952, he went with his grandparents to wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronco
Ronco was an American company that manufactured and sold a variety of items and devices, most commonly those used in the kitchen. Ron Popeil founded the company in 1964, and infomercials and commercials for the company's products soon became pervasive and memorable, in part thanks to Popeil's personal sales pitches. The names "Ronco" and "Popeil" and the suffix "-O-Matic" (used in many early product names) became icons of American popular culture and were often referred to by comedians introducing fictional gadgets and As-Seen-On-TV parodies. History Ron Popeil was inspired to start the company by the open market hustling he saw on Maxwell Street in Chicago during his youth. In the beginning, the company chiefly sold inventions developed by Popeil's father, Samuel "S.J." Popeil. Products include the Veg-O-Matic and the Popeil Pocket Fisherman, a product manufactured by S.J. Popeil's company. During the 1970s, Ron Popeil began developing products on his own to sell through Ronco. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Kives
Philip Kives (12 February 1929 – 27 April 2016) was a Canadian business executive, entrepreneur, and marketing expert from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is best known for founding K-tel, which sold household gadgets including the ''Miracle Brush'', ''Feather Touch Knife'', '' Veg-O-Matics'', as well as many compilation record albums. Kives reputedly coined the catchphrase "As seen on TV", which was included in many of the company's advertisements. Kives utilized low-budget television commercials to sell millions of products and build an international business empire. Personal life Early life Philip Kives was born on 12 February 1929, as the third of four children, on a small farm, near the town of Oungre, Saskatchewan. His parents were originally from Eastern Europe; because of hardships suffered by Jewish people, the family was relocated to Turkey by the Jewish Colonization Organization. In 1927, they immigrated to western Canada and worked a small farm. During the Great Depressio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
K-tel
K-tel International Ltd is a Canadian company which formerly specialized in selling consumer products through infomercials and live demonstration. Its products include compilation music albums, including ''The Super Hits'' series, ''The Dynamic Hits'' series and ''The Number One Hits'' series and consumer products, including the Record Selector, the Veg-O-Matic, the Miracle Brush, and the Feather Touch Knife. The company has sold more than half a billion units worldwide. K-tel is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and has been in business since the late 1960s. It has subsidiaries or other controlled entities in the US and UK. History K-tel was founded by Philip Kives, a demonstration salesman from Oungre, Saskatchewan. Kives had worked at a number of jobs as a young man, including selling cookware door-to-door and in a department store, and as a pitch-man on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. In 1962 he used his own money and his fast-talking demonstration style to create a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gallagher (comedian)
Leo Anthony Gallagher Jr. (July 24, 1946 – November 11, 2022), known mononymously as Gallagher, was an American comedian who became one of the most recognizable comedic performers of the 1980s for his prop and observational routine that included the signature act of smashing a watermelon on stage with a wooden sledgehammer. For more than 30 years, he played between 100 and 200 shows a year, destroying tens of thousands of melons with the sledgehammer he called the "Sledge-O-Matic". Early life Gallagher was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on July 24, 1946, to a family of Irish and Croatian heritage. Until the age of nine, he lived in Lorain, Ohio, but because of his asthma, the family moved to South Tampa, Florida, where he attended Henry B. Plant High School. He went on to graduate from the University of South Florida with a chemical engineering degree in 1970. He minored in English literature. Career After college, Gallagher began working as comic/musician Jim Stafford ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Studio; it also operated under the names the Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before changing its name to the Walt Disney Company in 1986. Early on, the company established itself as a leader in the animation industry, with the creation of the widely popular character Mickey Mouse, who is the company's mascot, and the start of animated films. After becoming a major success by the early 1940s, the company started to diversify into live-action films, television, and theme parks in the 1950s. Following Walt's death in 1966, the company's profits began to decline, especially in the animation division. Once Disney's shareholders voted in Michael Eisner as the he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ninja Turtles
''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'' is an American media franchise created by the comic book artists Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. It follows Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael, four anthropomorphic turtle brothers (named after Italian Renaissance artists) trained in ninjutsu who fight evil in New York City. Supporting characters include the turtles' rat sensei Splinter, their human friends April O'Neil and Casey Jones, and enemies such as Baxter Stockman, Krang, and their archenemy, the Shredder. The franchise began as a comic book, ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'', which Eastman and Laird conceived as a parody of elements popular in superhero comics at the time. The first issue was published in 1984 by Eastman and Laird's company Mirage Studios and was a surprise success. In 1987, Eastman and Laird licensed the characters to Playmates Toys, which developed a line of ''Turtles'' action figures. About US$1.1 billion of ''Turtles'' toys were sold between 1988 and 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katana
A is a Japanese sword characterized by a curved, single-edged blade with a circular or squared guard and long grip to accommodate two hands. Developed later than the ''tachi'', it was used by samurai in feudal Japan and worn with the edge facing upward. Since the Muromachi period, many old ''tachi'' were cut from the root and shortened, and the blade at the root was crushed and converted into ''katana''. The specific term for ''katana'' in Japan is ''uchigatana'' (打刀) and the term ''katana'' (刀) often refers to single-edged swords from around the world. Etymology and loanwords The word ''katana'' first appears in Japanese in the '' Nihon Shoki'' of 720. The term is a compound of ''kata'' ("one side, one-sided") + ''na'' ("blade"), in contrast to the double-sided '' tsurugi''. See more at the Wiktionary entry. The ''katana'' belongs to the ''nihontō'' family of swords, and is distinguished by a blade length (''nagasa'') of more than 2 ''shaku'', approximately . ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the List of most visited websites, second most visited website, after Google Search. YouTube has more than 2.5 billion monthly users who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos each day. , videos were being uploaded at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute. In October 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. Google's ownership of YouTube expanded the site's business model, expanding from generating revenue from advertisements alone, to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads. YouTube also approved creators to participate in Google's Google AdSens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Food Processor
A food processor is a kitchen appliance used to facilitate repetitive tasks in the preparation of food. Today, the term almost always refers to an electric-motor-driven appliance, although there are some manual devices also referred to as "food processors". Food processors are similar to blenders in many forms. A food processor typically requires little to no liquid during use, and even its finely chopped products retain some texture. A blender, however, requires a set amount of liquid in order for the blade to properly blend the food, and its output is also more liquidy. Food processors are used to blend, chop, dice, and slice, allowing for quicker meal preparation. History One of the first electric food processors was the Starmix, introduced by German company Electrostar in 1946. Although the basic unit resembled a simple blender, numerous accessories were available, including attachments for slicing bread, milk centrifuges and ice cream bowls. In a time when electric motors w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aladdin (1992 Disney Film)
''Aladdin'' is a 1992 American animated musical fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 31st Disney animated feature film and the fourth produced during the Disney Renaissance, it is based on the Arabic folktale of the same name from the ''One Thousand and One Nights''. The film was produced and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements from a screenplay they co-wrote with the writing team of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Featuring the voices of Scott Weinger, Robin Williams, Linda Larkin, and Jonathan Freeman, the film follows the titular Aladdin, an Arabian street urchin, who finds a magic lamp containing a genie. With the genie's help, Aladdin disguises himself as a wealthy prince and tries to impress the Sultan in order to win the heart of his free-spirited daughter, Princess Jasmine, while the Sultan's evil vizier Jafar plots to steal the magic lamp for his own uses. Lyricist Howard Ashman first pitched the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julienning
Julienne, , or french cut, is a culinary knife cut in which the food item is cut into long thin strips, similar to matchsticks. Common items to be julienned are carrots for , celery for , potatoes for julienne fries, or cucumbers for . Trimming the ends of the vegetable and the edges to make four straight sides makes it easier to produce a uniform cut. A uniform size and shape ensures that each piece cooks evenly and at the same rate. The measurement for julienne is . Once julienned, turning the subject 90 degrees and dicing finely will produce brunoise (). The first known use of the term in print is in François Massialot's (1722 edition). The origin of the term is uncertain. A is composed of carrots, beets, leeks, celery, lettuce, sorrel, and chervil cut in strips a half- in thickness and about eight or ten in length. The onions are cut in half and sliced thinly to give curved sections, the lettuce and sorrel minced, in what a modern recipe would term . The root veget ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
