Susan Powter

"Stop The Insanity" Infomercial brought Susan Powter to national and International fame. Doing an unprecedented $18,000,000 in sales the very first week. The infomercial series went on to achieve an average of 15,000 units a week sold for each week it was on the air. Fingerhut subsidiary "USA Direct" was the producer, manufacturer and syndication company and Infotainment Telepictures was projects Executive Producer. For $79.80, respondents would get a Stop the Insanity package that included five audio tapes, an exercise video, recipes, a guide to fat content in various foods, and a plastic skin-fold caliper that made rough estimates of body fat percentages. Roughly 200,000 of the kits were sold within the first two weeks of the infomercial's airing. From there, Powter moved 15,000 of them a week. "You gotta give [infomercial producer] USA Direct credit," Powter said in 1994. "They had chutzpah. They must have been biting their nails when I went out there in front of a live audience-a bald woman wearing a cut-off T-shirt, and no script. Our infomercials are the only ones that are not scripted. And our audiences are not paid to go 'ohh, ahh.' They're not paid at all." The Washington Post reported at the time "Over the course of little more than a year, that infomercial (a second is now being aired) has had the fastest growth rate in sales, and has been dubbed by the industry as the most successful program of its kind in the last five years. Powter and her infomercial recently won three awards at the National Infomercial Marketing Association convention." The New York Times wrote at the time "They certainly aren't. Millions of women have grabbed on to Powter's low-fat, high-self-esteem philosophy of life -- get well and get even through diet and exercise -- which she preaches on the infomercial, on ABC-TV's "Home" show and in the "Stop the Insanity!" book, which hit the New York Times best-seller list in its first week of publication. She defines the insanity as "a multimillion-dollar diet industry that fails to help women lose weight permanently and a fitness industry that excludes the unfit, both of which lead to women hating the way they look and feel. If you have a day job and haven't heard of the "Home" show, or you sleep so well that you're not channel-surfing at 3 A.M. (infomercial prime time), don't feel left out. She's coming soon, to a medium near you."