Susan Powter

"Stop The Insanity" Infomercial brought Susan Powter to national and International fame. Doing an unprecedented $18,000,000 in sales the very first week. The infomercial series went on to achieve an average of 15,000 units a week sold for each week it was on the air. Fingerhut subsidiary "USA Direct" was the producer, manufacturer and syndication company and Infotainment Telepictures was projects Executive Producer. For $79.80, respondents would get a Stop the Insanity package that included five audio tapes, an exercise video, recipes, a guide to fat content in various foods, and a plastic skin-fold caliper that made rough estimates of body fat percentages. Roughly 200,000 of the kits were sold within the first two weeks of the infomercial's airing. From there, Powter moved 15,000 of them a week. "You gotta give [infomercial producer] USA Direct credit," Powter said in 1994. "They had chutzpah. They must have been biting their nails when I went out there in front of a live audience-a b