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The King of "As Seen on T.V" - Ron Popeil Biography

Ron "But Wait!" Popeil is a multimillionaire. Over the last 40 years his products have pulled in more than $1 billion at retail. He was voted by Self magazine readers as one of the 25 people who have changed the way we eat, drink and think about food. And he's still going strong, his latest product, the Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ--which he invented--going out the door by the thousands every week. It wasn't always this way, however. Like many a self-made man, Ron Popeil didn't have a childhood. At least not the kind of childhood remembered wistfully as so many of us do when the rigors and responsibilities of adulthood weigh a few hundred pounds more than usual. He says he has blotted most of it from memory.

Born in 1935, he was for all practical purposes orphaned three years later when his parents divorced and he and his brother were shunted to a boarding school in upstate New York. The one memory of this period is of a Christmas when parents were taking their children home for the holidays. Ron peered through a window at the long, straight road leading to the school, hoping to see his father's car approach. It never did.

When he was seven, his paternal grandparents rescued Ron and his brother from the school and took them to their home in Florida. It wasn't much of a rescue. His grandfather, a Polish immigrant, was dour and sour without any redeeming human qualities. At 16, Ron decided to elect the lesser of two evils and went to Chicago to live with his father, Samuel J. Popeil.

Samuel Popeil was an inventor who sold his inventions to the major stores of the time: Sears, Woolworth's and the like. Ron's job was to help him in that endeavor by demonstrating the products to customers in the stores. The purpose was to persuade the store owners, managers and buyers that customers wanted Popeil gadgets.