We are used to seeing informercials on TV where a former celebrity endorses some product or another. The George Foreman Grill was an outlier in that group, as George Foreman was not exactly a has-been when it launched in 1995. Sure, his biggest victories were in the 1970s, but his comeback in 1994 made him a star all over again. Not long afterward, he became a star in infomercials selling a simple grilling machine.
When the infomercial first hit the air, Foreman was in his mid-40s, fresh off one of the greatest career comebacks in boxing history. He’d won Olympic gold as an amateur in 1968 and gone pro, knocking out Frazier in 1973 to become the heavyweight champion. He was KO’d by Muhammad Ali a year later, and at 28, he retired to become a minister at his own church in Houston. Ten years later, Foreman returned, going on to knock out Michael Moorer, a man nearly 20 years his junior, to reclaim his heavyweight title.
Foreman arrived on our TV sets as a guy who could still go toe-to-toe with anyone, bringing along the promise that there was an easier way to cook healthy and perhaps stay that way. And that one-two punch would spark a cultural shift in how men—or at least this man, and every guy I went to college with—cook and eat.
Foreman secured a sweetheart deal with the manufacturer, and made a ton of money off the grills, which became familiar to all Americans, and a part of the kitchen for many of them. Read the story behind the wildly successful George Foreman Grill at Men's Health. -via Damn Interesting