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VIDEOOne Nation Under a Snuggie
Freakish shirt-blanket hybrid becomes cultural phenomenon.
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That product: a blanket with sleeves.
The first mass-marketed sleeved blanket prototype (shockingly, there have been several) was the Slanket, which was featured on QVC (LINTA) and had $4 million in revenue last year.
But Allstar Products Group changed the name, trimmed the price, and aggressively marketed the freakish shirt-blanket hybrid under a much-more-appetizing name: the Snuggie. The kitschy product was peddled on reputable cable channels like ESPN (DIS), Comedy Central (VIA), and CNN (TWX).
Initially pitched as a way to reduce your home heating bills, Snuggies can now be found in over 4 million homes - and they've become a bizarre cultural phenomenon. Fresh off appearances on NBC’s (GE) Tonight Show and The Ellen Degeneres Show, the Snuggie only truly reached full media saturation when it was featured on a very special segment of Jimmy Fallon's Late Show, in which Fallon, his in-house band, and the entire studio audience all sported Snuggies - as did the show’s guest, actor Tracy Morgan, who claimed he felt like a “black Obi-Wan Kenobe.”
With even the New York Times -- which wrote 3 Snuggie-related stories in a single week -- seemingly smitten, the sleeved blanket seems to be here to stay. It's inspired fan clubs, a series of pub crawls, and even the SnuggieBook, an independent online resource which touts itself as “the social network with sleeves.”
But while the Slanket-Snuggie battle for America’s body heat raged, a wave of knockoffs has become a bizarre cottage industry. New sleeved-blanket brands include the Freedom Blanket, Blankoat, and the Toasty Wrap.
Meanwhile, Allstar has secured licenses with several prominent universities, which will allow alumni to cheer on their alma mater in style. There's also the Snuglette (for kids), the Peejaru ( Snuggie-style baby carrier), the Lippi Selk Bag (a British full-body sleeping bag), and the Lazy Patch (an Australian duvet suit).
Bizarre cultural phenomenon or business miracle, the Snuggie has become one of this recession’s most unlikely success stories.
And it's achieved immortal Youtube notoriety via this less-than-loving, not-safe-for-work parody, which boasts over 3-and-a-half-million views, rivaling the Snuggie itself:
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