How Suzanne Somers Turned ThighMaster into a Viral Fitness Success

Suzanne Somers was already a celebrity when ThighMaster turned her into a fitness star.

The Threes Company actress, who died of breast cancer on October 15, became the exercise machine’s saleswoman in the 1990s. She invited people to squeeze, squeeze until they had shapely hips and thighs while she demonstrated herself. the technique in a classic TV commercial.

Somers and her husband, Alan Hamel, collaborated on the ad, in which the camera starts at Somers’ feet and moves 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 V-Toner. It was invented in the 1960s by Anne-Marie Bennstrom, a Swedish physical medicine student who was looking for a way to help injured skiers strengthen their muscles, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

About 20 years later, she was approached about creating a homemade version of the gym 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 your body, biceps, triceps, all over your body.

The investors then approached Somers and her husband about promoting the product, pitching it as a fitness device for the upper body, pecs, and arms and demonstrating it to the couple that way. But Somers didn’t think that was the best selling point.

I’m looking at it and I said, Does this work for the inner thighs? Somers recalled in an interview with Entrepreneur in 2020.

She says: Yes, but people are more interested in the upper body. And I said, ‘Not women!

While focusing marketing on legs, Somers also thought V-Toner was an unsexy name, so the gadget was renamed ThighMaster. The TV commercial starring Somers quickly created a stir and the gadget became part of pop culture, including jokes on late-night TV.

“Maybe it’s funny because our mothers always told us to keep our legs together. And that’s a legitimate reason to move your legs back and forth,” she told Entertainment in 1992.

ThighMaster also became a huge financial success.

“We stopped counting after we sold 10 million of them, but they keep selling and selling and selling,” Somers said on the Hollywood Raw podcast in 2022. We’re probably at 15 million now.

The podcast host quickly calculated that at $19.95 per gadget, the price advertised in the TV ad, she made almost $300 million from the product.

Somers said he initially invested in ThighMaster with partners, but later bought them and owned the brand. The product is still available on his website.

Mens Health reviewed it a few years ago with the title I Used a ThighMaster for a Week and Honestly, I Loved It.

The appeal is that it’s easy to use because there are no buttons or weights and the exercise can be done while sitting on the couch, the reviewer wrote. But trainers gave it low marks, noting that it is used to train a specific muscle rather than doing a wide variety of exercises.

“OK, maybe the ThighMaster won’t turn you into the Hulk,” the reviewer wrote. “(But) it offers 15 minutes of pure tranquility, a way for you to rest your brain while moving your legs.”

Somers herself thought the fitness device would be part of her legacy.

Suzanne told me one time, she said, I think I’ll be remembered for ThighMaster. It will be on my tombstone, her husband told People.