Offer Shlomi ( he, שלומי עופר; born April 25, 1964), better known as Vince Offer or Vince Shlomi is an Israeli-American infomercial pitchman, director, writer, and
comedian.
Offer's first major work was the 1999 comedy film ''
The Underground Comedy Movie
''The Underground Comedy Movie'' is a 1999 film directed by and starring Vince Offer. Alongside short comedy sketches it features music by NOFX and Guttermouth, among others. It is considered by some as one of the worst films of all time.
Syno ...
''. Offer owns, produces, and appears in television commercials for his products "ShamWow!", an absorbent towel; the "Slap Chop", a kitchen utensil; a lint roller called the "Schticky"; a liquid cleaner called "InVinceable"; and another kitchen utensil called "Crank Chop". He has also officially advertised other products that he does not own, such as Quicky Grass.
Early life
Offer Shlomi was born in
Beersheva, Israel and grew up in
Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
Sheepshead Bay is a neighborhood in southern Brooklyn, New York City. It is bounded by Ocean Parkway to the west; Avenue T and Kings Highway to the north; Nostrand Avenue and Gerritsen Avenue to the east; and the Atlantic Ocean to the south. ...
, New York. As a child, he was fascinated by
Crazy Eddie
Crazy Eddie was a consumer electronics chain in the Northeastern United States. The chain was started in 1971 in Brooklyn, New York, by businessmen Eddie and Sam M. Antar, and was previously named ERS Electronics (ERS stood for Eddie, Rose and ...
commercials. Offer would shovel his neighbors’ driveways as a teen, working until the night. He dropped out of high school when he was 17 and moved to Los Angeles, changing his name to Vince Offer.
Career
Film
In 1999, Offer directed and appeared in ''
The Underground Comedy Movie
''The Underground Comedy Movie'' is a 1999 film directed by and starring Vince Offer. Alongside short comedy sketches it features music by NOFX and Guttermouth, among others. It is considered by some as one of the worst films of all time.
Syno ...
'', which was met with extremely negative reviews. DVDs of the film were marketed via television
infomercial. The film also led to several lawsuits. Although the film was released and screened in 1999, Offer was bankrupt by 2002 and home video distribution plans were shelved. Offer, who had previously been a successful vegetable chopper salesman and businessman, resumed selling vegetable choppers at swap meets to support himself and raise money to complete his film project. Within a few months, he had earned enough to resume production, and the movie was finally completed, released, and marketed entirely on late-night infomercials that Offer paid for with his earnings from the swap meet vegetable chopper sales. The film has sold in excess of 100,000 copies and Offer has used the proceeds from sales to file a lawsuit against the
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a scientology as a business, bu ...
.
He is an ex-Scientologist.
["Filmmaker Sues Church of Scientology"]
/ref>
In 2011, he appeared as himself in the Adam Sandler film ''Jack and Jill
"Jack and Jill" (sometimes "Jack and Gill", particularly in earlier versions) is a traditional English nursery rhyme. The Roud Folk Song Index classifies the commonest tune and its variations as number 10266, although it has been set to severa ...
''. Title character Jill, played by Sandler, referred to him as "the ShamWow guy".
In 2013, Offer released the universally panned '' InAPPropriate Comedy'', which he directed, wrote and appears in as a character called 'Peeping Tom'. The film was originally envisioned as a sequel to ''Underground Comedy Movie''. The film features stars Rob Schneider
Robert Michael Schneider (; born October 31, 1963) is an American actor, comedian, and screenwriter. A stand-up comic and veteran of the NBC sketch comedy series ''Saturday Night Live'', he went on to a career in feature films, including starri ...
, Michelle Rodriguez
Mayte Michelle Rodriguez (born July 12, 1978) is an American actress.
Rodriguez began her career in 2000, playing a troubled boxer in the independent sports drama film ''Girlfight'' (2000), where she won the Independent Spirit Award and Gotha ...
, Adrien Brody
Adrien Nicholas Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor. He received widespread recognition and acclaim after starring as Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's '' The Pianist'' (2002), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Acto ...
, and Lindsay Lohan. Examples of film sketches include comedian Ari Shaffir as 'The Amazing Racist', with deliberately offensive hidden-camera encounters with members of different minority groups, and Brody as 'Flirty Harry', a ''Dirty Harry
''Dirty Harry'' is a 1971 American neo-noir action thriller film produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the ''Dirty Harry'' series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department (SFP ...
'' spoof.
Infomercial marketing
Background
Offer funded ''The Underground Comedy Movie'' with his own money, but had difficulty selling it. He put the trailer in an infomercial, and claims to have sold 50,000 copies via direct order and 50,000 more in stores. In 2010, he advertised Eminem
Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem (; often stylized as EMINƎM), is an American rapper and record producer. He is credited with popularizing hip hop in middle America and is critically acclai ...
's ''Recovery
Recovery or Recover may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Books
* ''Recovery'' (novel), a Star Wars e-book
* Recovery Version, a translation of the Bible with footnotes published by Living Stream Ministry
Film and television
* ''Recovery'' (fil ...
'' album. In 2020, Eminem celebrated the 10th anniversary of his album, ''Recovery'', by introducing merchandise and sharing the original commercial starring Offer.
ShamWow
In 2006, Offer began to market a cleaning product that he saw in flea markets, an absorbent towel that he called the "ShamWow!" The title of the product derives from the French pronunciation of the chamois, pronounced "shammy" in English. Offer visited the factory in Germany where the product is made, and he decided to incorporate that fact into the TV pitch.[
The advertisement, filmed in the summer of 2007 with a budget of $20,000, received critical praise.][ '' Slate''s Seth Stevenson praised Offer for his "impressive and subtle mastery of the pitchman's art" (with lines such as "you know the Germans always make good stuff"), and wondered if Offer's "abrasive manner might also mark a unique, new strategy in the annals of pitchdom." Stevenson compared Offer to earlier, "more upbeat" television pitchmen like ]Billy Mays
William Darrell Mays Jr. (July 20, 1958 – June 28, 2009) was an American television direct-response advertisement salesperson. Throughout his career, he promoted a wide variety of products, including OxiClean, Orange Glo, Kaboom, ...
and the Home Shopping Network hosts and concluded that Offer's "smooth-talking condescension" was more suited to the present "zeitgeist
In 18th- and 19th-century German philosophy, a ''Zeitgeist'' () ("spirit of the age") is an invisible agent, force or Daemon dominating the characteristics of a given epoch in world history.
Now, the term is usually associated with Georg W. F. ...
" than the "earnest fervor" of spokesmen like Mays and 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 t ...
.
'' Consumer Reports'' reported that the infomercial for "ShamWow!" initially featured Offer claiming that the product held "20 times its weight in liquid". Later, the infomercial was changed to Offer claiming the "ShamWow!" held "12 times its weight in liquid", then again to "10 times". ''Consumer Reports'' did its own test on the product and found that it does indeed hold 10 times its weight in liquid but no more.
Offer says that he has sold millions of the towels. In contrast to claims that the absorbency of the towels is over-hyped, he responds that returns of the product are low.[
Pitchman ]Billy Mays
William Darrell Mays Jr. (July 20, 1958 – June 28, 2009) was an American television direct-response advertisement salesperson. Throughout his career, he promoted a wide variety of products, including OxiClean, Orange Glo, Kaboom, ...
had been promoting a similar product called Zorbeez two years prior to Offer's "ShamWow!" product. Mays noted that the "ShamWow!" commercials use many of the same product demonstration In marketing, a product demonstration (or ''"demo"'' for short) is a promotion where a product is demonstrated to potential customers. The goal is to introduce customers to the product in hopes of getting them to purchase that item.
Products offere ...
s as the earlier-produced Zorbeez commercial. ''Popular Mechanics'' tested the absorbency of the two towel products and declared "ShamWow!" was the more effective of the two, but noted "If you have reusable cloth rags (and a roll of paper towels for backup), then neither product is necessary." During the episode, it was suggested that the ''Popular Mechanics'' tester did not use the Zorbeez correctly.
Following the popularity of the commercial, ''TMZ
TMZ is a tabloid news website owned by Fox Corporation. It made its debut on November 8, 2005, originally as a collaboration between AOL and Telepictures, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested AOL in 2009. On September 13, 202 ...
'' in 2009 posted a remix of the commercial on their site. The remix was originally created by DJ Steve Porter and uploaded on 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 ...
.
In 2020, Offer started to sell "ShamWow!" masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. He appeared in an infomercial showing the cloths, followed by wearing the face mask, which are made up of viscose/polypropylene thermally bonded non-woven cloth, and then giving a thumbs up.
Slap Chop
In December 2008, Offer, who had previously sold kitchen utensils at swap meets, appeared in another kitchen gadget infomercial, advertising the Slap Chop and the Graty. The Slap Chop is a hand-held chopping device with internal blades; to operate it, the user places it over a food item and slaps down the button on the top. The Graty is a cheese grater operated by placing the cheese inside and then turning the outside housing of the utensil which causes the cheese to be grated. Offer's aggressiveness
Aggression is overt or covert, often harmful, social interaction with the intention of inflicting damage or other harm upon another individual; although it can be channeled into creative and practical outlets for some. It may occur either reacti ...
and use of double entendre
A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
s like "you're gonna love my nuts" have been noted by ''AdWeek
''Adweek'' is a weekly American advertising trade publication that was first published in 1979. ''Adweek'' covers creativity, client–agency relationships, global advertising, accounts in review, and new campaigns. During this time, it has cover ...
'', and, according to an ''Adweek'' blog, helped make Offer "the man who could beat Billy Mays at his own game."
Mays had been promoting a similar product set which included the Quick Chop utensil and the Quick Grater utensil prior to Offer's Slap Chop/Graty product set. Mays again noted that the Slap Chop commercials use many of the same demos as the earlier-produced Quick Chop commercial. Mays said in the same Adam Carolla
Adam Carolla (born May 27, 1964) is an American radio personality, comedian, actor and podcaster. He hosts '' The Adam Carolla Show'', a talk show distributed as a podcast which set the record as the "most downloaded podcast" as judged by ''Guin ...
radio show interview in February 2009 that Offer stole not only the Zorbeez product idea, but also the Quick Chop idea.[The Daily Tube: Billy Mays 'ShamPows' ShamWow Guy](_blank)
In April 2009, DJ Steve Porter posted an electro-themed "Slap Chop Rap" Auto Tune remix which grew a cult following
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...
during July 2009.
An excerpt from a televised Slap Chop commercial featuring Offer is briefly on screen during the 2013 blockbuster Marvel superhero movie ''Iron Man 3
''Iron Man 3'' (titled onscreen as ''Iron Man Three'') is a 2013 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Iron Man, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is the sequel to ''Ir ...
''.
In April 2019, DJ Steve Porter posted a 10-year anniversary video of the original electro-themed "Slap Chop Rap" Auto Tune remix.
Schticky
In 2012, Offer returned to television selling the "Schticky", a reusable lint roller that comes in three sizes: little Schticky, Schticky, and big Schticky.
The commercial makes many references to his other two commercials for the ShamWow and the Slap Chop, with Offer saying many of his catchphrases. He also pokes fun at his 2009 arrest by posing for a fake mugshot
A mug shot or mugshot (an informal term for police photograph or booking photograph) is a photographic portrait of a person from the shoulders up, typically taken after a person is arrested. The original purpose of the mug shot was to allow law e ...
.
An excerpt from the Schticky commercial can be seen in the TV show ''Breaking Bad
''Breaking Bad'' is an American crime drama television series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. Set and filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the series follows Walter White (Bryan Cranston), an underpaid, overqualified, and dispirited hig ...
'' during season 5, episode 7's "Say My Name
"Say My Name" is a song by American group Destiny's Child from their second studio album, ''The Writing's on the Wall'' (1999). It was written by Beyoncé Knowles, LeToya Luckett, LaTavia Roberson, Kelly Rowland, LaShawn Daniels, Fred Jerkins I ...
".
The Schticky commercial was co-written by the comedian Dante
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...
.
Canada Green
In April 2014, Offer appeared in a Canada Green commercial advertising their "Quicky Grass" product.
Crank Chop
In December 2015, Offer appeared in a Crank Chop infomercial demonstrating the abilities of the product that slices and dices food with the pull of a nylon cord.
Legal issues
Lawsuits
''The Underground Comedy Movie
''The Underground Comedy Movie'' is a 1999 film directed by and starring Vince Offer. Alongside short comedy sketches it features music by NOFX and Guttermouth, among others. It is considered by some as one of the worst films of all time.
Syno ...
'' was the subject of a lawsuit filed on September 23, 1998, by Offer against 20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...
and Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the co-directors of ''There's Something About Mary
''There's Something About Mary'' is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly. It stars Cameron Diaz as the title character with Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon, Lee Evans, and Chris Elliott all playing men who ...
''. Offer claimed that 14 scenes from ''Mary'' were lifted for his film. The case was dismissed in 2000, with the judge ordering Offer to pay over $66,000 in attorneys' fees.
In 2004, Offer sent out a press release through prnewsonline.com announcing his intention to sue the Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a scientology as a business, bu ...
. In 1997, while production on ''The Underground Comedy Movie'' was in progress, the Church of Scientology had allegedly begun a large-scale smear campaign
A smear campaign, also referred to as a smear tactic or simply a smear, is an effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda. It makes use of discrediting tactics.
It can be applied to individual ...
against Offer and his film (Offer was a Scientologist at the time). The director claimed the Scientologists' "Celebrity Center
Church of Scientology Celebrity Centres are Churches of Scientology that are open to the general public but are intended for "artists, politicians, leaders of industry, and sports figures".
The Celebrity Centre International was established in ...
" in Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywood, ...
threatened his Scientology friends in the movie business if they did not write malicious reports against Offer.[
In 2011, he was sued by his former personal assistant Jennifer Kosinski, who alleged that he stalked and emotionally abused her, forced her to be with him at all times, groped her, and offered her $20,000 for her to vacation with her family in exchange for her ]eggs
Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1,500 BCE. The most widely consumed eggs are those of fowl, especial ...
.
Arrest
On February 7, 2009, Offer and a 26-year-old prostitute
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penet ...
were arrested in Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on natural and artificial island, man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the ...
, after a physical altercation. The police report stated that the woman had bitten onto Offer's tongue and refused to let go, at which point Offer began beating her and left her with lacerations and fractures. Police later released photos of the bloodied Offer, hotel room, and the battered woman. Prosecutors later declined to file formal charges against either person. When Offer later spoke of the arrest, he stated, "It probably saved my life."
Personal life
Vince Offer married Melody Claire Mandate on April 18, 2014. He has one daughter with her. Mandate filed for divorce on October 18, 2018.
References
External links
*
Official ShamWow! website
Official Slap Chop website
Official Schticky website
Official Vince Offer YouTube channel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Offer, Vince
21st-century American businesspeople
American male comedians
21st-century American comedians
American male screenwriters
American former Scientologists
Infomercials
Internet memes
Israeli emigrants to the United States
People from Miami-Dade County, Florida
American salespeople
1964 births
Living people
People from Haifa
Israeli businesspeople
Israeli male comedians
Israeli Jews
Israeli male screenwriters
Israeli television personalities
Writers from Beersheba
Jewish American male comedians
Television personalities from Florida
Comedians from New York City
Actors from Beersheba