The 90s were a decade filled with magical and mysterious (and totally unnecessary) things being sold to us on cable T.V. late at night. It was the golden age of the infomercial and the shorter demonstration commercial, and no one was bigger than Ronco.
Ronco, founded in 1964 by Ron Popeil, was an absolute innovator in the space with such notable products as the Showtime Rotisserie, Electric Food Dehydrator, Popeil Pocket Fisherman, Solid Flavor Injector, Chop-O-Matic, Dial-O-Matic, and who can forget, the GLH-9 (Great Looking Hair Formula #9): hair in a spray can.
Hair in a can worked by spraying a dark filament onto your existing (and fleeting) hair and scalp to reduce the visibility of bald spots. It didn’t aid in hair growth but covered up noticeable patches. And they apparently sold over half a million cans of the stuff. At $39.92 a can (~$83.45 in 2024 money), that’s nearly $20 million in sales ($41.8 million in 2024)!
As I was researching this product for this article, I did notice that there are reviews of this product on Amazon as recently as 2019, and an overall rating of 3.5/5 stars.
