Top 20 As Seen on TV Products That Led To MASSIVE Lawsuits

Top 20 As-Seen-on-TV Products That Led to MASSIVE Lawsuits

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for your favorite infomercial products that got people sued.

#20: Body Solutions Too Good to Be True

Imagine eating all the fast food and sugar you want, drinking a supplement before bed, and watching the pounds melt away. If that sounds absurd to you, then congrats – you’re savvier than the thousands of people who bought Body Solutions Evening Weight Loss Formula bedtime drink. Manufacturer Mark Nutritionals racked up over $190 million in sales before the FTC and several state attorneys filed lawsuits, alleging that its claims were scientifically baseless. Meanwhile, the company had already filed for bankruptcy and agreed to edit its ads. It was eventually forced to pay out over $1 million in refunds to customers. The owner later went to prison for trying to hide assets from federal regulators.

#19: Not Enough Cash4Gold

This company’s ads were all over TV in the 2000s. They promised a hefty payout for mailing in all that old gold jewelry that people apparently used to have lying around. But customers claimed there were some shady practices going on behind the scenes. Some people received only a tiny fraction of what their gold was actually worth. Other people’s gold mysteriously disappeared. Consumers filed a class action lawsuit in 2010 that was ultimately dismissed, but the complaints prompted multiple investigations and stricter regulations. The company went out of business in 2012.

#18: Your Baby Can't Read

Sorry parents – no matter how smart you think your kid is, a nine-month-old baby can’t read. That was the insane claim made by Robert Titzer, creator of the Your Baby Can Read program. He charged $200 for the packet of books, flash cards, and videos, arguing that infants who couldn’t even walk yet could learn to talk and read simultaneously. His company raked in over $185 million selling these things to gullible parents. Unsurprisingly, this got him in trouble with the FTC. The agency charged that Titzer had misrepresented scientific studies and didn’t actually have any evidence to back up his claims. He was forced to pay a $300,000 fine, stop peddling nonsense, and stop using the phrase “Your Baby Can Read.”

#17: Pseudoscientific Power Balance

This bracelet supposedly used holograms to improve strength and balance, and in the late 2000s, it seemed like everyone was wearing them. The commercials were pretty convincing, but in reality, people were just experiencing a placebo effect. In 2010, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission went after the company for misleading marketing. CEO Tom O'Dowd admitted that the product claims had no scientific backing. In 2011, a class action lawsuit was filed against Power Balance in the U.S. The company settled, but it never had to pay up – it filed for bankruptcy the same year. But just a few years later, it was back to selling bracelets, this time claiming they were based on “Eastern philosophies” and customers should decide for themselves whether they worked.

#16: Melting, Breaking BlendJet2

Who doesn’t want a few metal shards in their morning smoothie? This battery-powered portable blender went viral in late 2022 … and it didn’t take long for reports of injuries to start rolling in. Customers found that the blades detached or broke, the charging cord melted, and most exciting, the battery tended to overheat and catch fire. The company issued a voluntary recall of around 5 million blenders in 2023, promising to send out replacements, though many customers never got theirs. Some consumers also joined a class action lawsuit which alleged that BlendJet used cheap materials to produce the overpriced blender, knew about the defects, and sold it anyway.

#15: Davison & Associates Ripped Off Inventors

How do people get their new products into infomercials in the first place? If they’re a small-scale inventor, they might work with a development company to get a deal with a manufacturer. Davison & Associates – now known as Davison Design & Development – is one of those, but it has a longstanding reputation for allegedly scamming the people it claims to be helping. Inventors have reported paying the company thousands of dollars only to receive nothing in return. The FTC sued the company for fraud in 1997, and again in 2006, saying that less than 1% of inventors actually made a profit from working with them. According to a slew of complaints on Reddit and the Better Business Bureau, Davison is still up to its old tricks.

#14: CarShield's False Promises

Say it ain’t so, Ice-T! If you’re as hooked on “Law & Order” re-runs as we are, then you’ve definitely seen the commercials for CarShield. It’s kind of like health insurance for your car, and just like health insurance, it turned out to be a bad deal. Customers paid up to $120 a month, and in exchange, CarShield was supposed to cover their vehicle repair costs. But when the bills came, many people discovered that a lot of repairs weren’t covered. The FTC forced the company to refund customers $10 million in 2024, and in 2025, consumers filed their own class action lawsuit against CarShield.

#13: Don Lapre's “Tiny Classified Ads”

Before there was drop-shipping, there was Don Lapre and his tiny classified ads. The pitch was simple: Run cheap, one-line ads in newspapers around the country selling a basic product. Lapre claimed that you could scale up indefinitely, and that he made $50,000 a week from the comfort of his one-bedroom apartment. His half-hour infomercial took off starting in 1992, and soon, Lapre expanded into standard con artist territory: vitamins and multi-level marketing. He started getting in trouble with the FDA for making ridiculous claims about his vitamins, and in 2011, he was indicted on 41 charges of conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering. Sadly, Lapre took his own life before he could stand trial.

#12: Miss Cleo Was a Fraud

We can’t speak to other TV psychics, but Youree Dell Harris, better known as Miss Cleo, was definitely scamming people. She wasn’t even Jamaican – she was born in L.A.! She started working for the Psychic Readers Network in 1997. Her Jamaican persona was a hit, so they put her in the infomercials. Starting in 2001, the company became the target of numerous lawsuits from state attorneys and the FTC claiming it engaged in deceptive advertising and fraudulent billing practices. In just a few years, it had collected a billion dollars from its clients. It ultimately had to refund half that money and pay a $5 million fine to the FTC. The state of Florida sued Harris separately, though it later dropped the charges.

#11: Smilin’ Bob Lied to Us!

There have been many schemes claiming to improve men’s size or performance, but Enzyte and its spokesman, Smilin’ Bob, might be one of the most memorable. The commercials must have worked, because Enzyte made $100 million in sales in 2003 alone. The ads were effective, but the pill wasn’t; customers filed a class action lawsuit in 2004 accusing the company of false advertising. People also complained that the company kept charging their credit cards after they’d canceled their autoship orders. But that wasn’t all. In 2006, owner Steve Warshak and five other people – including Warshak’s elderly mother – were indicted on 93 counts of conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering. Warshak spent almost 10 years in prison, though his mom got off with time served.

#10: ZippySack vs. Zipit

Who knew that asking kids to make their beds would lead to so much conflict. These products are basically sleeping bags that fit over the entire mattress. ZippySack’s version has cute characters on it to appeal to kids – and shortly after it hit the market, Zipit came out with basically an identical product. ZippySack sued for patent infringement, and the companies agreed to a settlement. Zipit would be allowed to sell its remaining 80,000 units, and then would take its product off the market. Everything went as planned … until Zipit found another 40,000 unsold sets. They tried to sell them in violation of the settlement. ZippySack sued again and won again, leaving Zipit with a whole bunch of unsellable sheet sets.

#9: Coral Calcium Is No Miracle Cure

If you watched late-night TV in the mid-2000s and ever saw an infomercial for a health product that sounded too good to be true, you were probably watching Donald Barrett. He founded ITV Direct, which produced commercials for supplements, powders, weight loss systems, and alternative medicine gurus. Unsurprisingly, these commercials made a lot of dubious health claims, and Barrett got into trouble with the FTC numerous times. In 2008, ITV was ordered to pay more than $50 million for claiming that two of its products, Coral Calcium and Supreme Greens, could cure cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s autoimmune diseases, and more. That case was the end of ITV.

#8: Exploding NutriBullet

It’s kind of surprising that this product is still on the market, considering that there’s been at least 140 lawsuits filed against the company since 2014. This super high-powered blender is a favorite for making healthy smoothies, but unfortunately, it has a tendency to explode. Numerous people have suffered severe injuries while using it, including cuts and burns. In 2022, a New York man was making a protein shake with his NutriBullet when it exploded and severed an artery in his hand. The same year, the company paid $10 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by people who had been injured by the NutriBullet.

#7: Ripple Rug vs. a Non-Existent Product

Fred and Natasha Ruckel’s cat play mat is a simple design – which is probably why they’ve been plagued by copycats. When Fred Ruckel saw a commercial for a knockoff called Purr N Play, he realized it wasn’t just similar – it actually was a Ripple Rug. The label was visible in some of the shots. The Ruckels sued, and discovered that Purr N Play’s parent company never actually manufactured the toy. They used a Ripple Rug to film the commercial and planned to produce Purr N Plays overseas on the cheap. However, this massive company nearly bankrupted the Ruckels in court, and they were forced to drop their lawsuit. But the Purr N Play was taken off the market.

#6: Flex Seal

You’ve definitely heard of this brand, if only from the memes. It’s also been featured in several lawsuits, some of them tragic. One man was using Flex Seal to repair his house when the can spontaneously combusted, burning his hands, arms, and neck. In 2023, a woman sued her apartment complex after renovators left a can of Flex Seal in her oven without her knowledge. When she used the oven, the can exploded, severely burning her and her daughter. And in 2021, a boy died on an amusement park river ride when his raft started to fill with water, overturned, and he was trapped underneath. The park had apparently been using Flex Seal instead of industry-approved materials to patch the rafts when they were damaged.

#5: Girls Gone Wild Without Consent

This company made a killing by filming intoxicated young women getting a little indecent at parties and bars and selling the DVDs. Thanks to its huge success and its famous late-night commercials, everyone had heard of “Girls Gone Wild.” It even inspired an episode of “Law & Order.” The problem was that it didn’t always get the girls’ consent before selling videos of them, and some of them turned out to be minors. The company settled several lawsuits and had to pay out almost $6 million after losing another. Founder Joe Francis was sentenced to a year in jail for filming underage girls.

#4: Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About

Kevin Trudeau can’t seem to stop scamming people – or getting in trouble with the law. His infomercials promoted all kinds of questionable miracle cures, financial advice, and weight loss schemes. He made money, but eventually the FTC caught up to him. In 2004, he was fined a half-million dollars. In 2007, a judge found Trudeau in contempt of court for making false claims in his book "The Weight-Loss Cure ‘They’ Don't Want You to Know About.” He was fined $37 million – which he never paid. Instead, he continued living in luxury and defying court orders … until he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Now he’s out and he’s turned to a more modern medium for marketing his scams: YouTube.

#3: $31 Million Bunch of Balloons

Telebrands, now known as BulbHead, is the original infomercial producer. They also stole a lot of people’s ideas. Josh Malone invented a gadget for filling and sealing dozens of water balloons at once. He launched his Bunch O Balloons on Kickstarter and made a deal with a manufacturer. But Telebrands managed to get their own Balloon Bonanza out before Malone’s even hit the market. They stole the idea from the Kickstarter and started making the toy while Malone’s patent was still pending. Malone and his manufacturer sued, and the jury awarded them $12.5 million. The judge decided to make an example out of Telebrands and doubled the award. With attorney costs and interest, the penalty came out to $31 million.

#2: Pocket Hose

It’s ironic that a company known for stealing other people’s patents would be so protective of its own. Telebrands has sued multiple people for patent infringement of the Pocket Hose, including a small company called Vieneci Garden. It also sued another company, Winston Products, for patent infringement, but that hose has since been recalled for exploding during use. Believe it or not, Telebrands even tried to sue the inventor of the Pocket Hose. He wasn’t listed on the patent when Telebrands filed it, and they attempted to stop him from selling his own hoses, but the inventor won that case. Craziest of all, a class action suit was filed against Telebrands because the Pocket Hose didn’t actually work that well.

#1: Get-Rich-Quick Scams

If someone promises you a secret trick to make easy money, they’re scamming you. In 2012, following an FTC lawsuit, a court issued a summary judgment against the marketers of three different as-seen-on-TV get-rich-quick schemes. “John Beck's Free & Clear Real Estate System,” "Jeff Paul's Shortcuts to Internet Millions,” and "John Alexander's Real Estate Riches in 14 Days” all promised easy cash. But the court found that most of the people who bought them actually lost money. It fined the marketers a record $478 million for the deception. One of the defendants, John Beck, was ordered to pay $113 million. He appealed the judgment, and while the appeal was still ongoing – in fact, the day of a hearing – the 73-year-old man disappeared without a trace.

Would you ever buy something off an infomercial? Let us know in the comments.