Image courtesy of ContinuLink

In my late 70’s, I have been very proud of my ability to complete the Sunday Times crossword in a few hours, and, occasionally, bid and make a grand slam in bridge.  Citing the “Use it or lose it” philosophy, I felt I was doing whatever I could to stave off the cognitive decline that often comes with age.  Check out this video from the Wall Street Journal on May 14, 2013 which suggests (after a brief video ad) a new approach to preserving mental agility.  Surprisingly, it involves playing video games!

A government study by the NIH has shown rather dramatically that playing cognitive training games such as those made by Brainetics, Lumosity  and Posit Science Corporation can slow or even reverse declines in brain function that usually come with age, while doing crossword puzzles cannot.

An earlier government study showed that older people who played various cognitive games had better health related outcomes, driving records, and even ability to perform everyday tasks at home. Even cancer survivors, who, whether from their disease or from their therapy, suffer loss of memory and attention span, benefit from playing cognitive video games.

So, yes, continue to do puzzles, play cards, learn new games or skills take classes, knit, do home repairs or whatever you enjoy doing.  Live your life and exercise your body and brain, but, in addition, take a lesson from your grandchildren – play video games.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a particularly adept breakfast cook, with most of my experience coming in the egg department, so the Perfect Pancake seemed to be designed and marketed especially for people like me. As such, I decided to put the product to the test for my own stomach’s sake (or suffering, I didn’t know what to expect) and to give you an in-depth review on the product’s attraction for you, using our completely unscientific Top TV Stuff Try Before You Buy rating system.

Durability: 4.5/5

Let’s face it, this was going to be an easy one for the Perfect Pancake. Unless you plan on using the product to brain would-be home invaders, the product is designed to stand up to frequent pancake-making. Like all “non-stick” pans, you are still going to want to coat the Perfect Pancake with spray or butter to help it do its job the right way. But overall, the Perfect Pancake isn’t going to break on you anytime soon. It’s also fairly easy to clean and store, making it a welcome addition to anyone with an especially small apartment with an especially cramped kitchen.

Usefulness: 5/5

I was absolutely delighted with the Perfect Pancake, as only a barely amateur chef could be. By removing the shaping and flipping aspects that usually frustrated us while trying to make pancakes, we were able to deliver tasty cakes in minimal time, with an incredibly limited mess. Given my limited confines in a studio apartment mini-kitchen, this aspect gets an especially favorable rating. Aside from the Perfect Pancake doing its promised job, the device also allows you to get creative with your pancakes, including favorites like blueberries, chocolate chips, or bananas while still producing the same uniform pancakes for everyone to enjoy. We highly recommend this for a hangover breakfast, since its combination of thought-free use and limited mess is especially handy for those with pounding headaches.

Coolness: 4/5

Well, this all depends on how cool you think either pancakes or kitchen utensils are. If you are someone responsible for feeding a bevy of hungry and particular children in thirty minutes time, than the Perfect Pancake will definitely have a coolness appeal to you. On top of that, anyone who loves pancakes from their favorite diner but wouldn’t dream of undertaking them in their own kitchen might find the Perfect Pancake the perfect introduction to performing their own take on the breakfast favorite. If you plan on utilizing the Perfect Pancake pan on a regular basis, we think you will find it not only cool, but also incredibly efficient. As always, we welcome any of our Top TV Stuff community to share their own experiences with the Perfect Pancake by posting a comment to this blog. Let us know if you had a different experience with the Perfect Pancake, or if you would just like to rave about your latest creations!

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Top TV Stuff gives away a free product each week to the comment we like the best, so add your comment below for a chance to win!

While there is a plethora of approaches, both proven and unproven, touting themselves as support systems for student academic growth and success, one system that has stood out from all the rest is Brainetics Math and Memory System, a multi-stage system for decoding and storing information in a student’s memory that has proven to help aid student success and ease anxiety and frustration in a wide array of academic settings.

What Does It Do, and Why Should You Care?

The main goal of the Brainetics Math and Memory System is to improve overall mental performance by giving participants a variety of activities and strategies. These are designed to improve such critical and varying mental skills as organization, focus, memory retention and mental capacity growth, problem solving, thinking outside of the box, and sorting and prioritizing information for future use. In the growing world of high-stakes testing, in which schools rely more on more on high-stakes standardized tests administered in a time-sensitive format, students can relieve anxiety and stress before and during an exam by training their mind with the various activities and stages of the Brainetics Math and Memory System. What’s more, beside relieving general anxiety about learning, Brainetics Math and Memory System can help build student confidence and self-efficacy by giving them a variety of ways to grow and succeed as a learner, teaching important self-reliance that continue to be essential throughout their academic and professional careers. Looking into the near future, not only will students be able to experience greater success on testing during their grade and secondary school careers, but students will be more prepared for college admissions exams including the ACT and SAT. In the past, preparing for these tests could involve hours of stressful review and studying on an overwhelming array of content. However, with Brainetics Math and Memory System, students instead learn strategies and mental skills that are crucially important to success on time-intensive exams like these and others.

Tell Us Your Own Brainetics Story for a chance to win!

One of our ongoing goals here at Top TV Stuff is to bring our users together to share their own experiences with the As Seen On TV products we feature, because we think the best way to make up your mind about a product is to hear from other actual users and satisfied customers. Plus, Top TV Stuff gives away a free product each week to the comment we like the best! So if you have picked up a Brainetics kit for your own student (or yourself, no shame here!), and you have a success story or cautionary tale to tell, please post it to our comments section of this blog post, or share it on our Facebook page and Twitter feed. We want to hear about whether Brainetics has delivered on its promises and helped out a learner in your home, or whether you didn’t get what you expected when you tried it. Share your experiences with us, so we can all decide for ourselves if Brainetics is the right choice for our young learners!

The mammoth crowdsourcing auction site (yes, they were doing it a decade before it became a term), with its equally mammoth community of active sellers, is a natural fit for finding great deals on some of your favorite products from the As Seen On TV brand. Not only does EBay offer options and variety through its community, but with trustworthy user ratings and a number of appealing shipping or payment options, EBay remains a great place for finding that As Seen On TV gadget you just have to have.

Want to know more about why EBay can be a great place to find some of your favorite As Seen On TV gear that isn’t currently featured here at Top TV Stuff? We thought so. In this week’s Hot Deals section, we take a closer look at some of the most appealing aspects of EBay for those of you looking for your next Snuggie, or Grip Go, or hundreds of other great goodies!

What Can EBay Do For You?

Perhaps the most enticing aspect of shopping for your favorite As Seen On TV stuff on EBay is the auction platform, which can let you gamble on getting some of your most desired products for way below their already low-low (couldn’t resist) prices. Depending on the product and the shipping options, savings on some As Seen On TV products could be as much as half off many current web retailer listings. Couple that with the fun and excitement of bidding on your deal, as opposed to searching for it, and EBaying for your favorite As Seen On TV gear can become flat out addictive.

Aside from this, another great feature for you as a customer of As Seen On TV merchandise through EBay is the reliable and extensive user rating index. Beside being able to access product information and review through the site, the site’s extensive network of sellers have been capably and reliably rated by many of their customers. As such, you can establish not only where your product will be coming from, but also whether the retailer has an established record of good business. This way, you can be sure that deal you can’t believe you snagged on your new Grip Go isn’t too good to be true.

Make EBay Work For You

If getting competitive with other As Seen On TV fans isn’t your cup of tea, many EBay sellers also list Buy It Now prices, which allows you to bypass the auction and just order the product and pay for it immediately. While these prices will typically be higher than final auction totals, depending on the product and how bad you want it, this can always be an easy way to go. Either way, the next time you go looking for an As Seen On TV favorite that isn’t currently available here on Top TV Stuff, EBay may be the best option.

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Top TV Stuff gives away a free product each week to the comment we like the best, so add your comment below for a chance to win!

As such, this week Top TV Stuff is rolling out its newest blog feature, designed to explore the products that have taken our community by storm this week. Combining user purchases and demands, customer feedback, and another metric we like to call “our opinion”, we’ve created a completely unscientific and unreliable ranking system to highlight the hottest products in our web store. So, without further ado, and with much curious anticipation on your part (Do you feel it yet? How about now? Or now?), let’s highlight the top three products in the Top TV Stuff universe this week:

1. Snuggie
2. FlexSeal
3. Grip Go

 Honorable Mention: Trendy Top

It comes as no surprise to most of us that the Snuggie, champion of late-night television infomercials and responsible for countless parodies and internet jokes, has remained near the top of the Top TV Stuff want list for awhile now. Despite consistent challenges from many of our other excellent products, the Snuggie remains foremost in peoples’ hearts (as well as on their wish lists) and continues to dominate the As Seen On TV world, not only here on Top TV Stuff but throughout the rest of the web and brick-and-mortar stores also.

Our two biggest challengers to the Snuggie’s reign of domination this week are Flex Seal and Grip Go, two products designed to solve consistent annoyances in your daily routines, albeit a bit less marketable than the Snuggie. The Flex Seal has spawned countless updates and new versions, making it one of the most consistently in-demand products in the As Seen On TV universe, while the Grip Go has remained popular among the commuter and traveler sets. Its hands-free design has been eminently useful to hundreds of Top TV Stuff community members and remains a user favorite.

Help Your Favorite Product Rise in the Rankings!

As we said before, our Top TV Stuff weekly rankings are a very subjective system, and we freely admit that we are easily moved by the opinion of our faithful Top TV Stuff community. So if you think a different product in our web store deserves mention at the top of the As Seen On TV product list, let us know by commenting on this post, or making your case on our Facebook page or Twitter feed. If we start to see other products commanding the loyalty and following of our users, we will feature them in future weekly lists. So let us know your opinions and favorites, and look forward to our next Top TV Stuff Top Stuff list to see if your favorite product made it!

Comment for a chance to win!

Top TV Stuff gives away a free product each week to the comment we like the best, so add your comment below for a chance to win!

Featured on countless late-night television infomercials, pop-up ads, and As Seen On TV feature articles, no product has become a pop culture mainstay quite as quickly and as broadly as the Snuggie. From what was originally a simple, solid-color item intended only to perform its duty, public enthusiasm for the Snuggie led the company to produce hundreds upon hundreds of custom versions of the popular blanket-robe combo.

So what is it about the Snuggie that has made it such a popular mainstay in the As Seen On TV universe? Aside from the functional uses of the Snuggie (hey, who couldn’t use a blanket/robe hybrid, especially if you are like this writer and call the 7-month Chicago winter your home turf), the playful and enthusiastic infomercials seemed to engage a much larger following of As Seen On TV buffs than the usual product. Soon enough, people were moving beyond buying the product just for themselves; everyone from their children, to their grandparents, to their dogs and cats were being adorned in Snuggies.

Oh, The Humor

Of course, this profusion of Snuggies to all members of the family and the household has led to something we’ve come to expect from every pop-culture novelty that grabs the consumer consciousness; hilarious pictures and YouTube videos. You’ll notice the picture adorning this blog post is just one example of the potential humor to be found in Snuggies in your own home.

Aside from animals-in-Snuggies and babies-in-Snuggies memes and photos, intrepid college students have found that utilizing Snuggies in Greek life rituals and rec sports competitions have also resulted in a wide array of hilarious blooper videos. Across the country, college students have been integrating ridiculous costumes into alcohol-fueled situations for years, and the extent of student-in-Snuggie videos also provide a treasure trove of funny stuff to help entertain you during the doldrums of the work day.

Show Us Yours!

As always, we at Top TV Stuff like to get our users to join in on the As Seen On TV fun as much as possible. So, we are asking you to find and send in your own favorite videos and images of people using Snuggies in, well, unconventional ways. You can post the images or videos as comments to this blog, or to our Facebook page and Twitter feed. So join in with us in livening up our work days with some Snuggie fun, and submit your favorite videos and pictures of the Snuggie in action today!

Comment for a chance to win!

Top TV Stuff gives away a free product each week to the comment we like the best, so add your comment below for a chance to win!

A favorite springtime salad is what the Italians call Caprese – a tasty layering of mozzarella, tomato and basil, and all but the cheese can be home grown with ease. A Basil plant can be picked up for about a dollar. It requires just sun and water to thrive and keep you supplied the entire season. Tomatoes are equally easy to grow, especially with the Topsy Turvy Tree and Topsy Turvy planter .  A tomato plant can be purchased on line if there are no nurseries near you. And as a substitute for traditional mozzarella cheese, Americans have just rediscovered Buratta.  Burrata is a fresh Italian cheese, made from mozzarella and cream. The outer shell is solid mozzarella while the inside contains both mozzarella and cream, giving it an unusual, soft texture and a somewhat buttery flavor.  In fact the name “burrata” means “buttered” in Italian.

To make an Insalata Caprese, take your home grown or other vine ripened tomatoes and slice them about ¼ inch thick.  Slice the mozzarella or burrata the same way and alternately layer the tomatoes and cheese, spinkling your basil sprigs without the stem between the layers.  Drizzle the staks with olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. I like to use a small amount of balsamic glaze to heighten the flavor.  Open a bottle of Pinot Grigio or a Vernaccia di San Gimignano and enoy. Salud!

Think about some of the greats that have come through the annals of the Home Shopping Network, QVC, and a thousand different late night television commercials for products meant to do everything from grow into a plant shaped like the President, to letting you turn off your lights without leaving your bed (oh, The Clapper). 

The Legend: Billy Mays

Perhaps the most well-known slinger of As Seen On TV gear in recent years was the late, great Billy Mays, who’s repertoire included some of the very products currently featured in the Top TV Stuff store. 

Mays was capable of generating an unbelievable amount of energy over some fairly mundane products, and quickly became the ubiquitous face of As Seen On TV commercials, and outlet advertisements.  Mays also briefly starred in a show about shilling, titled “Pitchmen” (how appropriate), alongside British infomercial regular Anthony “Sully” Sullivan. 

The show featured the two veteran As Seen On TV personalities vetting aspiring pitchmen and giving them their notes.  The pair made for a positive explosion of energy and feedback during their short time together, often to the discomfort of some of their aspiring pitchmen.  But it was probably to be expected from the two, given the ample evidence of their sales styles.

Of course, other recognizable names have come and gone through the late-night infomercial circuit over the years, including Top TV Stuff blog favorite Mike Rowe.  In case you missed our feature on Mr. Rowe and his interesting start in acting, in brief Rowe was YouTube fodder in the years before YouTube existed (luckily for Mr. Rowe).  However, a litany of hilarious outtakes and breakdowns from Rowe’s years manning (and being fired from) the night shift at QVC make for an entertaining dark side to the pitchman profession.

Show Us Your Favorite Pitchmen

However, three men in the history of pitchmen is not a fair sample, and so for our Feel Good Friday focus this week, we wanted to call on you, our Top TV Stuff blog readers, to provide your favorite YouTube clips in the comment section of this story.  Find the funniest, most outrageous, inappropriate, entertaining clips of As Seen On TV pitchmen (or others, no discriminating here) and post them to our blog.  We will take a look at the submissions, and pick our favorite from one of you.  That person will get a sweet little prize from Top TV Stuff, which for now we will just leave as a bit of a mystery.  So get hunting through Google and YouTube and dig up your favorite pitchmen performances, outtakes, or mishaps, and post them here.  And that ought to give us all something to enjoy on our Fridays.

Bad Foods

Foods high in sugar, fat, white starches and processed fruits can spike your sugar and give you a hard crash by the time you reach the door. The usual culprits include pastries, pancakes, fruit bars, jelly, sugar cereal, granola, and white toast. The reason these are such a bad way to start the day is that white breads, cereals, rice and pasta have been stripped of their nutritious hulls, leaving only bad carbs behind. Why are whole grains so much better? Think of the nutritious hulls on grains as the tough stuff — the stuff your body has to actually work to process. Your body works hard to extract the nutrients from the hull, burning calories, gaining energy and absorbing the nutrients. Without the hull, all that is left is the stuff that burns quickly then crashes soon afterward.

Better Foods

Start your day with a high protein, low-fat meal. Egg whites, whole wheat toast, oatmeal, turkey bacon, ham, lowfat cottage cheese, farmer cheese or whole grain cereals like Kashi or Grape Nuts are all flavorful, healthy alternatives. Whole grain breads and cereals, cereals with flax seed, kasha or quinoa, and oatmeal give you the caloric and nutritional boost that your body can burn more slowly and evenly throughout the morning and carry you to your next meal. You can even make perfect pancakes without butter or oil with the Perfect Pancake Pancake Maker using whole grain flours and topping your morning flapjacks with nuts and berries. My personal favorite low-cal, low-carb breakfast is a whole grain flatbread cracker topped with 2 ounces of fat-free Farmer Cheese and a teaspoon of sugar-free raspberry jam and placed under the broiler for one minute. It tastes heavenly, warm and delicious and gives the day just the kick-start it needs!

Morning Beverages

Every picture of a healthy breakfast shows a big glass of juice alongside the food. While vitamin-packed and healthy in a way, juice is also packed with natural sugars that raise your blood sugar quickly and burn off just as quickly. A glass of nonfat milk is a great way to get your Vitamin D and Calcium without the big sugar crash. Still need your AM Vitamin C? Eat an orange instead.

Do you have healthy breakfast tips? Share them here in the comment section below!

There are plenty of books on the topic, starting with a Top TV Stuff favorite Natural Solutions for Things That Bug You™. And after you pick up this great 400-page book of  safe and effective tips for ridding your yard and house of pesky creatures and you’re waiting for it to arrive via free shipping, try the following easy tricks. Then come back and comment below on how they worked – and share some tips of your own!

Send The Ants Marching

Image from Mother Earth Living

Ants are attracted to food, but not all food. It turns out, there are quite a few things that turn them away. If ants are ruining your picnic or if they’ve set up camp in your kitchen, you can spritz them with a spray bottle of soapy water or you can set up a natural food barrier of any of these to keep them out:

• Cucumber peels
• Coffee grounds
• Mint tea
• Cayenne pepper
• Cinnamon
• Lemon juice

Send Mosquitoes Packing

Mosquitoes are fans of standing water, so your first order of business is to change the water in birdbaths, standing pools and outdoor pet dishes.

If mosquitoes are crowding your barbecue, toss sage or rosemary on the coals to send them away. Other scents mosquitoes aren’t fans of are: garlic, thai lemongrass, citronella and marigold plants.

For a beautiful evening barbecue effect that will also keep the mosquitoes away, pick up a citronella torch that burns citronella oil and makes your backyard look like a luau!

Send The Flies Flying

Flies love people, pets and people-food, but here’s a list of what they don’t love:

• Eucalyptus oil
• Sweet basil
• Clover

Then again, you may want to attract them in one place to keep them out of another. In that case, all-natural flypaper can do the trick. Simply soak strips of brown craft paper in a mixture of syrup, sugar and brown sugar overnight, then string up away from your eating area.