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 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.
When he was 18, Popeil attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he joined Alpha Epsilon Pi before withdrawing after six months.
After returning from college, Popeil continued to work and learn from his father, who was also an inventor and salesman of numerous kitchen-related gadgets, such as the Chop-O-Matic and the Veg-O-Matic. The Chop-O-Matic retailed for US$3.98 and sold over two million units.
The invention of the Chop-O-Matic caused a problem that marked the entrance of Ron Popeil into television. The Chop-O-Matic was so efficient at chopping vegetables that it was impractical for salesmen to carry all the vegetables needed for the demonstrations over the course of a day. The solution was to tape the demonstration. Once the demonstration was taped, it was a short step to broadcasting it as a TV commercial.
Popeil initially operated as a distributor of his father's kitchen products and later formed his own company, Ronco, in 1964. He continued as a distributor for his father and added additional products from other manufacturers. Ron Popeil and his father became competitors in the 1970s for the same retail store business.
Popeil received the Ig Nobel Prize in Consumer Engineering in 1993. The awards committee described him as the "incessant inventor and perpetual pitchman of late night television" and awarded the prize in recognition of his "redefining the industrial revolution" with his devices. He was a past member of the board of directors of Mirage Resorts, where he served for 22 years under Steve Wynn, as well as a past member of the board of directors of MGM Hotels for seven years under Kirk Kerkorian. He became the recipient of the Electronic Retail Association's Lifetime Achievement award in 2001 and he is listed in the Direct Response Hall of Fame.
Popeil was previously a member of the advisory board for University of California, Los Angeles' Business, Management, and Legal Programs. In August 2005, he sold his company, Ronco, to Fi-Tek VII, a Denver holding company, for US$55 million, with plans to continue serving as the spokesman and inventor while being able to spend more time with his family.
In 1956, Popeil married Marilyn Greene, with whom he had two daughters; they divorced in 1963. He married Lisa Boehne some time after this and had one daughter with her. He and Boehne divorced sometime before 1995, when he married Robin Angers, with whom he had two more daughters. Ashley Tisdale and Jennifer Tisdale are his cousins.
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. Yankovic's song "Mr. Popeil" was a tribute to his father, Samuel (and featured his half sister Lisa Popeil on backing vocals). Ron Popeil later used this song in some of his infomercials.
In the 2007 film Funny Games, one of the characters is channel surfing and briefly flicks past an infomercial for Ron Popeil's Vegetable Dehydrator. In the 1996 horror film Scream, the catchphrase is said ("But wait, there's more!"), itself in the tradition of a horror film's saying of a famous TV catchphrase, in the 1980s horror film The Shining saying of "Here's Johnny!" (Carson) by announcer Ed McMahon.
In Malcolm Gladwell's book , Popeil is interviewed and many of his products, most notably the Veg-O-Matic and Showtime Rotisserie, are discussed. Gladwell's 2000 New Yorker piece "The Pitchman" about Popeil won Gladwell the 2001 National Magazine award.Malcolm Gladwell, "The Pitchman"; . The New Yorker.
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