Iconic Infomercial Catchphrases: Who Said Them and What They Sold

“But wait, there’s more!” If you grew up with late-night TV, that line is lodged somewhere in your brain. Iconic infomercial catchphrases are the short, repeatable lines a pitchman used to sell one product over a long-form TV spot, and the best of them outlived the gadgets by decades. This page sorts them by the job each line did inside the pitch (the offer, the demo, the pitchman’s signature, the problem, the call to action), then checks who actually said what. That second part matters more than you’d think, because several of the most quoted lines were never said the way people remember.

Catchphrase, Slogan or Jingle: What Separates Them?

A catchphrase is a line people repeat outside the ad, usually in situations that have nothing to do with the product. A slogan is the brand’s official tagline, the line printed on the packaging (Nike’s “Just Do It” is the textbook case). A jingle is a slogan set to music. The three overlap, but they come from different places.

Most memorable advertising slogans came out of an advertising agency and a 30-second commercial. Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” ran in 1984 with Clara Peller as the customer staring at a tiny patty, and Walter Mondale borrowed it in a March 1984 primary debate. Budweiser put three puppet frogs croaking “Bud,” “Weis,” “Er” into the 1995 Super Bowl, then started the “Whassup?” craze in December 1999. Life cereal had “Hey Mikey!” Those are famous ads, and they belong to the brand.

Direct-response lines work differently. They were written to be said a dozen times inside a single half-hour infomercial, often by the person who owned the product, and each one had a job: raise the value, narrate the demo, or push the viewer to the phone. That job is the most useful way to group them.

Offer Lines: Where “But Wait, There’s More” Really Came From

Most published histories credit “But wait, there’s more!” to the Ginsu knives team, not to Ron Popeil. Ed Valenti and Barry Becher ran those commercials out of Dial Media from 1978 to 1984 and sold an estimated two to three million sets, and their copywriter Arthur Schiff is credited with writing the “there’s more” line (a Washington Post profile of Schiff reported that the “But wait” was added later). Ronco’s founder used the line constantly too, which is why so many people hand him the credit.

When we traced the credit for this update in October 2026, the obituaries split along exactly that line: coverage of Becher’s death in 2012 credits him and Valenti, while Popeil’s 2021 obituaries list the phrase among his signature lines. The fair version is that the knife ads popularized it and Popeil made it a lifelong habit.

“Now how much would you pay?”

Popeil’s 2021 AP obituary names this as one of the lines he popularized, alongside “Set it and forget it.” It is a price-anchoring pause: the host stacks up bonuses, asks the question, lets the viewer guess high, then reveals a lower number. The question only works because the stacking came first, which is why the two lines travel together.

“Act now and you’ll also receive…”

Schiff’s credited lines also include “Act now and you’ll also receive…” and “Isn’t that amazing?” The first one turned urgency into a template. Swap in any bonus item and the sentence still works, which is exactly why every kitchen-gadget spot of the 1980s and 1990s seemed to use some version of it.

Demo Lines That Narrated What You Were Watching

Demo lines describe the action on screen in a few words, so the viewer remembers the picture and the phrase together. They are the most durable type because the image does half the remembering.

“Set it, and forget it!”

Ron Popeil coined this for the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ, and it is the one line nobody disputes. It packs an instruction and a benefit into four words: put the chicken in, walk away. Ronco said the oven sold more than a billion dollars’ worth of units, according to the AP. For more on the man behind it, see our profiles of famous infomercial pitchmen.

“It slices! It dices!” (the misquote)

This one is famous and probably wrong. In his 1995 autobiography, The Salesman of the Century, the man usually blamed for it insisted he never said “It slices! It dices!” in any ad. Veg-O-Matic print ads and some pitches described the chopper as one that “slices and dices and juliennes to perfection,” and the box later carried “slices and dices.” The punchier spoken version seems to have been sharpened by parody, including Dan Aykroyd’s “Bass-O-Matic” sketch from the first season of Saturday Night Live. The “makes julienne fries” add-on can’t be tied to any Ronco spot we could find.

“Clap on! Clap off!”

The Clapper sound-activated switch is the rare product whose line is a jingle and a demo at once: you hear the instruction and watch the lamp obey it. Joseph Pedott, whose Joseph Enterprises also sold the Chia Pet (“Ch-ch-ch-chia!”), built both campaigns around a sung hook. When Pedott died in 2023, “Clap on, clap off” was among the jingles his obituaries quoted.

“Apply directly to the forehead!”

The 2006 HeadOn spot from Miralus Healthcare said the product name and this phrase three times and nothing else. There was a reason it said so little: an earlier HeadOn commercial that claimed headache relief was pulled after Better Business Bureau objections, so the new ad made no claim at all. The Today show called it the worst commercial of 2006, and the repetition made it unforgettable anyway. HeadOn is a homeopathic stick, and no clinical trial has shown it works.

“That’s a lotta damage!”

Phil Swift’s line is usually filed under Flex Tape, but meme archives trace it to a Flex Seal bucket demo, a different product from the same company. Swift Response uploaded the Flex Tape water-tank spot to YouTube in January 2017, and edits of both clips spread through 2017 and 2018. It is the clearest modern case of a sales line becoming pop culture on its own, with no TV airtime needed. Source quality here is thinner than for the older lines, since meme databases rather than news archives did most of the documenting.

“You’re gonna love my nuts!”

Vince Offer said this in the Slap Chop spot, filmed in August 2008 and aired that December, during the chopped-nuts demo. The double meaning was a euphemism nobody missed, and the same spot gave us “Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life.” People often pin it on ShamWow, Offer’s earlier towel spot filmed in the summer of 2007, but it belongs to the Slap Chop.

Pitchman Signatures: Lines That Sold the Person

Some lines sold the host as much as the product. They built trust by putting a real name and face on the offer, and they followed the pitchman from one product to the next.

“Hi, Billy Mays here!”

Mays opened his commercials with this introduction before launching into OxiClean or whatever product came next. The AP described him as the bearded, boisterous pitchman on commercials airing hundreds of times a week. He died in Tampa on June 28, 2009, at 50, and the greeting is still the quickest way to summon his whole style in three words.

“I’m not only the Hair Club president, but I’m also a client.”

Sy Sperling, founder of Hair Club for Men, delivered this in a low-budget spot that made him a household name and got spoofed by The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live and an M&M’s ad. Checking the obituaries for this page, the NBC News obituary printed the line with the “but” intact, which is the version used here. Many lists drop it. The line worked because it answered the obvious objection (does this guy actually use it?) before the viewer could ask.

Problem Lines: Selling the Fear Before the Fix

Problem-agitation lines dramatize the problem rather than describe the product. They are the hardest to write well, because a line that sounds sincere in the studio can sound ridiculous on the 50th airing.

“I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”

The famous version comes from LifeCall, a medical-alert company whose ads featuring “Mrs. Fletcher,” played by Edith Fore, began running in 1989. The origin is disputed: Fore said she came up with the line herself, while competitor Life Alert has claimed a 1985 commercial of its own. Trademark filings cited in the line’s published history show LifeCall registered the phrase in 1992 (LifeCall closed in 1993), and Life Alert later registered “Help! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” in 2002 and the shorter version in 2007. It became one of the most parodied lines in TV history precisely because it was played straight.

“Stop the insanity!”

Susan Powter’s early-1990s fitness spot named the enemy (endless dieting) instead of the product, and her shouted, rapid-fire delivery made it impossible to ignore. The companion book reached the New York Times best-seller list. Her line is a good counterexample to the idea that every infomercial hook is upbeat.

One omission is deliberate. Suzanne Somers and the ThighMaster are among the most recognizable images of 90s TV selling, but the “squeeze” line quoted online varies from list to list, and we couldn’t match any version to a transcript. The image survived; the wording didn’t.

Call-to-Action Lines and the Three-Word Rewrite

“Operators are standing by” belongs to no single host. Histories of the Ginsu campaign list it with “Order now!” among the lines that defined that era, and by the time of the 80s infomercials it was the default closer. Its weakness is hidden in plain sight: idle operators suggest nobody is calling.

Infomercial writer Colleen Szot is credited with fixing that. In the 2008 persuasion book Yes!, Robert Cialdini and his co-authors report that she changed the line to “If operators are busy, please call again,” and that her program broke a home-shopping sales record that had stood for nearly 20 years. The new wording implies other viewers are already calling. It is the best example of a way to sell a product with a three-word edit, and the reported sales figure comes from the book, not an independent audit.

Misquotes and Disputed Credits in Iconic Infomercial Catchphrases

Half the lines on most lists are slightly off. This table compares the version people repeat with what the record shows.

Quoting one of these in a script, a trivia question or a pitch deck? Check it in this order:

1. Find the original spot, not a remix. Remixes and meme edits drift from the real wording within a few uploads.
2. Read the pitchman’s obituary in a major outlet (AP, NBC News, the Washington Post). Obituary writers quote the line the family and company recognize.
3. Search the USPTO trademark database if someone claims ownership. A registration tells you the exact wording a company defended, and when.
4. Treat meme databases and quote sites as leads, not proof. They are where most of the misattributions above started.

Why These Lines Outlived the Products

Three traits show up in nearly every line above. They are short (most run under eight words), they are repeated many times in one sitting, and they are tied to something you can see: a rotisserie, a lamp clicking off, a stick on a forehead. A line that has all three enters the lexicon. A line missing the visual usually dies with the product.

The format has moved rather than died. Short phone-shot product demos lean on the same compressed, repeatable hooks that used to fill commercial breaks after midnight, and the Flex Tape clips show a line can now go viral without any TV airtime. For background, see our explainer on what an infomercial actually is, our guide to 90s infomercials, our roundup of famous infomercial pitchmen and our all-time best infomercials.

If you are writing about or reusing iconic infomercial catchphrases, start with the wording in the table above rather than the version you remember. Then match each line to its product and pitchman before you print it. If the credit is disputed, say so in one clause; readers who grew up with these ads will notice a wrong attribution faster than a missing one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who really said “But wait, there’s more”?

The line is most often credited to the Ginsu knives commercials of 1978 to 1984, produced by Ed Valenti and Barry Becher and written by copywriter Arthur Schiff. Ron Popeil used it so often that his obituaries list it among his signature phrases, so both claims show up in print.

Did Ron Popeil say “It slices, it dices”?

He said he did not. In his 1995 autobiography he wrote that he never used those words on TV, though Veg-O-Matic ads described the chopper as one that “slices and dices.” The spoken version was likely sharpened by parodies such as the Saturday Night Live “Bass-O-Matic” sketch.

Are iconic infomercial catchphrases trademarked?

Some have been. Life Alert has registered both “Help! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!” and “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”, following an earlier LifeCall registration that lapsed. Generic call-to-action lines such as “Operators are standing by” are too common to protect.

What was Billy Mays’s catchphrase?

Mays opened his commercials with “Hi, Billy Mays here!” before pitching OxiClean and other products. The greeting, delivered at full volume, became his signature until his death in 2009.