Popular Culture
Ron Popeil's success in infomercials, memorable marketing personality, and ubiquity on American television have allowed him and his products to appear in a variety of popular media environments including cameo appearances on television shows such as the X-Files, Futurama King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Sex and the City and The Daily Show. Parodies of Popeil's infomercials were done on the comedy show Saturday Night Live by Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy and the "Veg-O-Matic" may have provided comedian Gallagher inspiration for the "Sledge-O-Matic" routine since the 1980s. Additionally, the professional wrestling tag team The Midnight Express dubbed their finishing move the Veg-O-Matic. In Futurama, he is said to have invented the technology to keep heads alive in jars.
Popeil was voted by Self Magazine readers as one of the 25 people who have changed the way we eat, drink and think about food.
Popeil has been referenced in the music of Alice Cooper, the Beastie Boys, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, who wrote a parody song entitled "Mr. Popeil" which was a tribute to Ron Popeil's father, Samuel Popeil. Ron Popeil later used this song in some of his infomercials.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures, Ron Popeil is interviewed and many of his products, most notably the Veg-O-Matic and Showtime Rotisserie, are discussed. The article was first published in The New Yorker in 2000.
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Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large rations by the popular arts, which allows most people to cope with these twin specters.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their ocellated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)