"Has THIS ever happened to YOU?"

AT LAST! Someone has made a truly impressive montage of all the "before" moments from infomercials. I have already watched it a dozen or so times. 
Wah-wah-wah-waaaaahhhhh!

The RackTrap - As Seen on TV

I watched this video in disbelief, and then I watched it again (in disbelief). What's weird about it is that I can't find reference to this product anywhere else. Anywhere. I took Google by the heels and turned it upside-down and shook it, and nothing came out - and that almost never happens. So, like Perfect Polly the chirping plastic parrot and that stuffed laughing hyena thing, this looks like an idea that went straight down the sewer without a detour.

"The Rack Trap" itself is the wrong name. It's just. . . wrong. The whole product is "off", in that it's something that just could not work, period, but to call it The Rack Trap. . . what does it mean? I saw a couple of other things with that name on YouTube, but they had to do with deer antlers. You know. . . a rack.

I'm well aware "rack" can be used as slang for a woman's breasts, but it's kind of obscure. You're more likely to hear "boobs", "tits", or the more genteel "girls". "Rack" has the wrong sound to it - you should get some semblance of the product's purpose from its name. "Trap" means - what? It can mean a, well, a trap, but what else? 

This is, in case you don't want to sit through a pretty excruciating video, a little flat purse you stick in your bra. That's right. It has a zipper in it. There is a list of all the things you can "hide" in this little flat purse:

Money
Credit Cards
Bandaid
Mints
Gum
License
Tissues
Bus Pass
Flash Drive 
MP3  Player
Gym Card
Condoms
Business Card

In the video, there's no looking down your neckline and fishing around to find the top of your bra cup and sliding the "trap" in and jiggling it around to get it in the right place. The lady sort of slaps it on her chest, and that's it. It looks as if she isn't even wearing a bra, which would be kind of silly because then The Rack Trap would just fall on the floor.

Maybe it's like Snoopy's dog house or something, or a clown car, where you can't believe how much can fit in such a small space. More likely, if this is anything like even the most miniaturized version of a woman's purse, stuff would accumulate, makeup and keys and tampons and mirrors and sunscreen and earrings and hair scrunchies and press-on nails and - you get it, by now. 

It would be like trying to fit a bumpy baseball in your bra cup. Oh, great. Such a smart look! "Jesus, what's that lumpy thing under your shirt?" Soon it would weigh 20 pounds or more. And trying to get stuff out of it in public? Are you kidding? Here she is, head bent (in a dark restaurant, say), rummaging around in there, unable to find it, losing it down her front and having to lift up the bottom of her blouse to retrieve it . . . It's not a good look.

I think it's deliberate that the women in the ad are wearing thin, clingy fabrics instead of thick sweaters. The Rack Trap is supposed to just sort of melt into your body, I guess, so it doesn't show through silk or sheer tank tops. It does appear to vanish when the women slap it against their chests, but I just can't see it happening that way. When they pull them out, they do it so fast you can hardly follow it. It seems to just come out of the thin air, as if there's some sort of photographic trick going on.

I wonder who they hire for these infomercials, who they get to effuse and enthuse about this stuff. I am sure for the most part they haven't used the product, which gives those testimonials their hilariously fake quality. "It doesn't even show!" one woman cries, the assumption being that it certainly WOULD show, like any fat little zippered thing you crammed in your brassiere.

AFTER-THE-THOUGHT: One more thing that bothers me. Doesn't it sound like they're saying "rat trap"? Rat trap, rat trap, rat trap. The more I watch it, the more it sounds like that.

Do your ears hang low?

Or does any other part of your body? There's an infomercial for that. I've had a run of them lately - and they're great material for gifs, such as these (below) demonstrating what happens when you use these fabulous whatever-they-ares - earring lifters or whatever. MagicBax! They're just a special backing for pierced earrings that holds the earring more firmly in place, but as far as I'm concerned, such products already exist, and you can get them at Dollarama or Dollar Tree for a buck or so.

These look very uncomfortable to me, as they're a sort of bulky metal thing. But oh, the women using them look ecstatic! One of the major existential problems of their lives (how to hold their earrings on) has been solved forever.

I'm reminded, for some reason, of the old Playtex bra commercials, demonstrating the power of the bra "to lift and separate". Digging a little deeper into this strange topic, I find dozens or maybe even hundreds of videos of "how to wear pierced earrings without piercing your ears". The one I just looked at, just too absurd to re-post, had an attractive-looking young woman literally wrapping flesh-colored adhesive tape around her earlobes - like those thick fabric bandages you used to see - and sticking the earring through it. It was - I can't speak. She said, "Oh, girls, this is FABULOUS! If you brush your hair over it, it's even better!" My God.

The injured look was never my thing, but maybe it would be OK if seen from far away, like on the catwalk or competing in a pageant or something. Not likely to happen to me any time soon.

I have a ton of earrings collected and given to me over decades, and the rare time I try to wear them, I can't find my left earlobe at all - it seems to have shrunk, for some reason - and the hole in it is even harder to locate. If I do manage to get a backing over the post, it won't come off. Once my husband had to take pliers and wire cutters to remove one that had somehow got bent out of shape.

Someone once told me the sure-fire way to remove an earring backing from a stubborn wire was to coat the post in lube.

I could make a joke here, but I guess I won't.