HOW 25 YEARS OF THE GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL CHANGED HOW MEN COOK

What happens when an ageing prizefighter, a quirky gadget and iconic ’90s marketing combine to take over the world?

- KEVIN PANG

In case you missed it, this is what the world’s most successful infomercial looks like: George Foreman – buff, bald and swaggering – sports a maroon boxing robe as he strides into the made-for-TV kitchen of his exceptionally cheerful cohost, a woman named Nancy Nelson. It is 1996, and her mind is about to be blown. “You did not come here today to box, right?” Nelson asks Foreman.

“Not at all,” he says, before tossing off the robe to reveal that he’s wearing a red apron beneath it. “As a matter of fact – da-da-dada!” (Yes, Big George made his own transformational sound effect. And it worked.)

Over the next 30 minutes, the semiofficial-sounding “George Foreman Grilling Show” introduces the concept of a cheap electric grill with slanted vertical ridges and a press-down lid: George Foreman’s Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. Plug it in and it gets hot quickly. Toss on some meat, lower the lid, place the tiny grease tray in front, and—voilà! In minutes, your food emerges grease-free and evenly cooked (often well-done, to be exact).

Foreman hams it up, making clear that his target isn’t Joe Frazier or Ken Norton but burger fat and chicken grease. At one point, he points to his own embossed signature on the top of the device. “Hey, we gonna eat what we want, but we gonna knock the fat out,” he says. Burgers sizzle; the audience oohs and ahhs. This is campy, melodramatic ’90sera selling at its best.