I tested 5 classic 'As Seen On TV' gadgets to see if they're still worth buying in 2026
Home I tested 5 classic 'As Seen On TV' gadgets to see if they're still worth buying in 2026 Features By Peter Wolinski Published 8 August 2026 11 min read I'm a lean, mean, cheap-trash-testin' machine When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Products whose main selling point was that they'd been demonstrated on TV sales networks or infomercials — because as we all know, that's a guaranteed marque of quality.Recently, I got thinking about whether or not any of that tech is still knocking around, and whether it still holds up. There are still loads of 'As Seen On TV' gadgets you can buy, some of which you can still get new.
- ▪Home I tested 5 classic 'As Seen On TV' gadgets to see if they're still worth buying in 2026 Features By Peter Wolinski Published 8 August 2026 11 min read I'm a lean, mean, cheap-trash-testin' machine When you purchase through links on our
- ▪Products whose main selling point was that they'd been demonstrated on TV sales networks or infomercials — because as we all know, that's a guaranteed marque of quality.Recently, I got thinking about whether or not any of that tech is still
- ▪There are still loads of 'As Seen On TV' gadgets you can buy, some of which you can still get new.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Tom's Guide |
| Canonical URL | https://www.tomsguide.com/home/i-tested-5-classic-as-seen-on-tv-gadgets-to-see-if-theyre-still-worth-buying-in-2026 |
| Publication time | Sat, 08 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-08-08T09:00:47.318Z |
| Last seen | 2026-08-08T09:00:47.318Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | --xs0hjA9nCd · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Home I tested 5 classic 'As Seen On TV' gadgets to see if they're still worth buying in 2026 Features By Peter Wolinski Published 8 August 2026 11 min read I'm a lean, mean, cheap-trash-testin' machine When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Future) Jump To: George Foreman Pocket Hose Slap Chop Scrub Buddi Sodastream Copy link Facebook X Reddit Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter If, like me, you grew up in the 90s and 00s, you'll no doubt be familiar with 'As Seen On TV' home gadgets.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Tom's Guide.
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