Requiem for an Advertising Annoyance

Image by Nevada Tumbleweed via Flickr

I always cherished the Oxi Clean products, but over a few years since seeing them since fourth grade, their ads, as well as their related products (Orange Glo, Kaboom, etc.), seem to pester my nerves. Speaking of such ads that have annoyed me for so long, the vocal force of auditory badgering that have gotten my goat in them, Billy Mays, died local to my home in the Tampa Bay area. Deborah Mays, his spouse, found him unconscious and not breathing and called paramedics from the Tampa Fire Rescue. They pronounced him dead in his house in South Tampa at 7:45 AM.

Personally, I don’t know Mr. Mays, but I know all too well a bundle of his ads that have, since I was 11, flowered here and there on CNN and Food Network. I neither could escape from seeing Kaboom (a cleaner) touted between parts of a newscast on Headline News nor endured seeing Mays peddle the Oxi Clean Detergent (video below) in between segments of a wonderful episode of Howard Goodall’s Choir Works on Ovation.

Before Mays annoyed the heck out of me in the Oxi Clean infomercials, he hailed from McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, located near Pittsburgh. After graduating high school in 1977, he debuted as pitchman by initially peddling portable washing machines on the Atlantic City sidewalk. After a series of road shows and expos, he found immense success in promotions of the products we usually associate with him. In April this year, he and Briton Anthony Sullivan launched their reality show on the Discovery Channel, Pitchmen. New products in the show included the seat cushion, Soft Buns.

Mays had annoyed me  with his advertising each commercial break I have seen, but his clientele of his products he promoted for years, as well as many Tampa Bay locals, will always remember him as the pitchman for Oxi Clean.

All About Billy Mays