Suzanne Somers was already a celebrity when the ThighMaster made her a fitness star.
The “Three’s Company” actress, who died of breast cancer on Oct. 15, became a pitch woman for the exercise gadget in the 1990s. She invited people to “squeeze, squeeze your way to shapely hips and thighs” as she demonstrated the technique herself in a classic TV commercial.
Somers and her husband, Alan Hamel, collaborated on the ad, in which the camera begins at Somers’ feet and pans up as Hamel’s voice says, “Great legs!”
The ThighMaster — a simple V-shaped fitness device made of metal tubes connected with a spring-loaded hinge to create resistance — started out as the “V-Bar” or the “V-Toner.” It was invented in the 1960s by Anne-Marie Bennstrom, a Swedish physical medicine student looking for a way to help injured skiers strengthen their muscles, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Some 20 years later, she was approached about creating a home version of the exercise equipment for the public.
“I always knew it would sell… because it works,” Bennstrom told the newspaper in 1993. “You can use it all over the body… biceps, triceps, all over.”
Investors then approached Somers and her husband about promoting the product, pitching it as a fitness gadget for the upper body — the pecs and arms — and demonstrating it to the couple in that way. But Somers didn’t think that was the best selling point.
“I’m staring at it and I said, ‘Does that work for the inner thighs?’” Somers recalled in an interview with Entrepreneur in 2020.
“She goes, ‘Yeah, but people are more interested in their upper body.’ And I said, ‘Not women!’”
As she focused the marketing on the legs, Somers also thought the V-Toner was “a very unsexy name,” so the gadget was renamed the ThighMaster. The TV commercial starring Somers quickly created buzz and the gadget became part of pop culture,…
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