Preview: "As Seen On TV"

In today's turbulent economy, fortune 500 companies are cutting back on their television advertising spending, a move that has opened up more space for "as seen on tv" product ads.

It started with an infomercial advertising a blanket with sleeves. And it has quickly become a pop culture craze.

Scott Boilen is CEO of the Allstar Marketing Group, the direct response firm never made a blanket before, but now has the Snuggie to thank for adding 100-million dollars in sales to the bottom line.

For those scoring at home they've sold enough Snuggies to outfit the entire population of Minnesota. "I never thought we'd have 400 parodies on youtube and 100's of facebook pages," said Boilen.

And a pub crawl.

Thousands of people are signing up and they're just having fun.

Maybe its something about all the bad news out there and people just want to have fun and have a cute little product. Nobody knows. Nobody knows why anything becomes a part of pop-culture.

But wait, there's more!

Go inside the 150-billion-dollar direct response industry with Darren Rovell of CNBC and meet the minds behind the ginsu, the pocket fisherman and the chia pet.

"As seen on TV" premieres Wednesday, April 22 on CNBC 9 p.m. ET and 10 p.m. ET.

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