Suddenly, something was glaringly absent from daytime television, and cleaning product commercials seemed less like professional wrestling expositions and more like, well, cleaning product commercials. I didn’t think it was possible, probably because I thought of Mays less like a man and more like a point of cosmic energy equal to that of a supernova. The news that Billy Mays died hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember times in my childhood when I would fall asleep on my couch with the TV on, only to be woken up 20 minutes later by someone screaming, “Long live your laundry!” I’d open my eyes, and who would I see? The endearing, bearded face of Billy Mays smiling as he dumped OxiClean into a transparent tub of unbelievably filthy clothes.īilly Mays held more mental real estate with the American public’s mind than anyone thought was possible for an infomercial pitchman.ĭespite the countless parodies that people did of his commercials, there was a reason he appeared during nearly every commercial break: the guy was absolutely electric, and he could really sell products. His on-screen antics would get you fired up about the most mundane house cleaning and home repair products, and everyone and their brother has attempted an impression of him. Once dubbed “The Infomercial King,” Mays brought more energy to the small screen than probably any other figure since the invention of the television. If you lived through the 1990s and early 2000s in the United States, there’s almost no chance you don’t know the name Billy Mays. The untimely death is a reminder that the on-screen and off-screen lives of a celebrity can be surprisingly (and sometimes tragically) different. Billy Mays died in 2009, just before his 51st birthday, likely of drug-related causes.While some found his over-the-top excitement about cleaning products annoying, the infomercial king found stardom in an industry that had never expected to produce a star.Born in a small suburb outside Pittsburgh, Billy Mays would grow up to become America’s most famous infomercial star.
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