Word: pitchmen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...generation of stand-ups with his deft skewering of pop culture and the media. Others (like Carlin's mentor, Lenny Bruce) had poked fun at these subjects, but none with as sharp an eye or as much performing brio. Carlin's unctuous radio deejays, TV newscasters and commercial pitchmen were not simple parodies; he used them to satirize a whole society that had its priorities out of whack. "The sun did not come up this morning, huge cracks have appeared in the earth's surface, and big rocks are falling out of the sky," a Carlin newsman once announced. "Details...
...Sunshine Biscuits to promote Hydrox cookies. In a lawsuit, Pillsbury claims that Drox looks and sounds too much like the trademark Doughboy. The suit describes Drox, who appears on cookie packages and in TV commercials, as "a two-legged, puffy white voiced character." When it comes to pudgy pitchmen, the Doughboy has at least one other colleague -- the sixtysomething Michelin Man. But apparently the baking business isn't big enough for two roly-poly guys to coexist peacefully...
...competition for UAL has grown frantic now that the carrier has narrowed its search to nine sites, scattered from Denver to Martinsburg, W. Va. Pitchmen in the farm town of Rantoul, Ill., have put together $300 million worth of free land and other incentives, hoping to substitute UAL for nearby Chanute Air Force Base, slated to close in 1993. In January a special session of the Oklahoma legislature approved a new 1% sales tax to pay for tax concessions, job-training subsidies and other lures. Boasts Ed Bee, Oklahoma City's economic development director: "We have a done deal." Well...
...heart drug hit the market in 1987 in a blinding flash of pitchmen, promotion and public relations hoo-ha. The product of biotech breakthroughs, TPA was touted as clearly superior to the competition, a clot-busting drug called streptokinase, on the market for 15 years. Though TPA (for tissue plasminogen activator) is 10 times as expensive as the older drug, the majority of U.S. doctors bought the pitch, and the new drug became the favored method of breaking up clots in heart-attack victims. Then last week an international team of researchers reported what some doctors had suspected all along...
Life-insurance salesmen are normally a garrulous lot. But many are keeping mum after publication this month of a Los Angeles Times article chronicling the latest industry boomlet: door-to-door pitchmen have been plying the city's most crime-plagued neighborhoods and brandishing blood-and-guts clippings from the local press in order to sell cheap policies to residents who might be vulnerable to street violence. The insurance typically costs $10 a month for up to $10,000 in death benefits, enough to cover basic funeral services...