Get On & Ride! The AbPony

Welcome to the premiere of Abominable Abdominals. Yes, you found it (congratulations?): the only blog (last time we checked…which was never) dedicated to abdominal machine infomercials (at least for now). If you must ask why, then you clearly are not as bored as you thought you were.

For the inauguration of this much-needed social critique, we present to you, in all its near-pornographic glory: The AbPony.




Never mind that this “pony” is nothing more than a glorified rocking chair, or that they provide no real evidence that rocking back and forth will tone your abdominal muscles, or even that the use of dummy graphs and “sexy” people are all just marketing gimmicks meant to trick the untrained observer into believing that this piece of equipment will actually help. Never mind all of that.

Well, actually do mind all of that—those things will be all this post is about.

We first start off with “Wow!” which is what you’re all probably thinking anyway: a girl walking up to the pool in someone’s backyard is pretty spectacular. She has an okay body and face, but why does she need the arm bands? She looks like a portion of the American flag. For the second blonde girl, the cameraman was clearly more interested in the camel toe than the abs. Why would these women show off their stomachs in their grandmothers’ underwear? The narrator is talking about abs, but you, O viewer, not knowing what this is about exactly (although you must be fairly certain that it’s for an exercise machine of some sort since it’s three in the morning and you’ve run out of scotch) are not prepared for the real wow: that which can only be called “The AbPony.”

But wait! The narrator does not get to that yet. Still interested? We know we are.

Apparently rocking back and forth for five minutes a day three times a week is all you need to have a stomach you can join a jug band with. The really weird part before the really really weird part is that they circle and cross out (a la many a “no smoking” sign [except these just look like giant, tilted e’s]) the “No more” in “No more lying on the floor” and “No more yanking on your neck” etc. This creates a double negative, so does that mean there is more lying on the floor? The facial expression of the guy cheating with his arms and legs (grammatically and linguistically ambiguous) is priceless, as if he forced an expression to show that cheating on a crunch is more difficult than the crunch itself. If it’s more difficult, is it really cheating? Besides, one must keep one’s cheating muscles toned as well—just in case.

But his expression is all we are left with before we get to the main course: The AbPony! Of course—if you’re anything like we are—you’re already smirking because of the goateed crunch-faker's expression. So the “Wow!” is lost. Not only that, but also those quasi-beautiful bathing beauties and male torsos that were carved by Michelangelo are forgotten because of the cheater—talk about anti-climactic.

The disappointment continues when you see the “pony” that you must “ride”. It doesn’t look the least bit like a pony by any account. By a stretch of the imagination one could conceive an ox or other—how do I say “bovine like” without the “like”?—cowish—some cowish creature. What it looked like to us prima facie was a misshapen, useless bicycle. That is really what it is, but somehow they believe it looks like a pony. They are so convinced of this that we are told that all we do is “get on and ride!” However, here riding can only be a sexual reference: any other type of riding usually denotes an inert torso.

It looks easy to use, I’ll give the AbPony that much, but why the graphic with the ghostman being levitated off the floor in the middle of his workout to be placed on a piece of playground equipment? And did you hear what the narrator just said? “The AbPony takes the most effective exercise ever for your stomach, the old ab crunch, up off the floor into a comfortable seated position; immediately you are locked into the perfect muscle-tightening, tummy-toning crunch every time…” (emphasis added [for {ironic} dramatic effect]). If both propositions are true, then there is hardly a difference between crunches and riding the AbPony. If the old ab crunch is so good, why even bother with the AbPony? You know the old saying, if it ain’t broke… (don’t try to late-night peddle a sexually-suggestive equine contraption). But the narrator did stress the negatives of the old ab crunch: lying on the floor, yanking the neck, cheating. I guess the most effective exercise ever for your stomach is dangerous for your back, neck, and morality.

The next thing that we absolutely hate about all infomercials (and even some commercials) is the presentation of dummy graphs. The AbPony is exemplary in this aspect. The claim: The AbPony is 100% more effective than regular crunches (despite the fact the narrator just told us that the old ab crunch was the most effective exercise ever for your stomach). The proof? A bar graph made to order, blue bars labeled “AB CRUNCH” in plain white (we’re supposed to believe this is boring) and the gimmicky red and blue “AbPony” (they should have made the bars for the graph a different color, it’s hard to see the “Pony” part) galloping to the top—only our old friend the ab crunch can’t quite make it. And what does it mean that crunches done on the AbPony are 100% more effective? Does that mean it takes only half as many crunches to get washboard abs? Really? How do you measure that? In the infomercial, they show the same guy doing both versions of the crunch, but if he already got washboard abs with the AbPony, how could he measure the effectiveness of the old ab crunch? If they used two different people, how do you know it’s the effectiveness of the equipment and not just different body chemistry? Who conducted this “independent test” in the AbPony laboratory?

Just when the questions start rolling off your tongue and you find these claims to be literally incredible, they bust out the big guns. A beautiful woman of indiscriminate race (maybe all races: it does say it’s “easy enough for everyone”) is rocking back and forth with a completely Zen expression. If she was the first woman we saw in this infomercial, the initial “Wow” might have been appropriate. There’s nothing like sex appeal to forget a bunch of weak arguments, non sequiturs, and contradictions (we’re looking at you, Sarah Palin… ba-ZING!). It’s nice how the makers of the infomercial place “everyone” between the heights of 5’2” and 6’4”. It also said it could hold up to 300 pounds, so some people that may really need the AbPony would not be able to use it. Can we say “ab-solutely ridiculous”? (We can and will… and just did).

Fortunately for us, the internet saw fit to cut this infomercial off before it really got out of hand.

So there you have it: the inaugural post of Abominable Abdominals. We hope you enjoyed our first post, and expect other bad infomercials to come. If you would like to send us a ridiculous exercise-related infomercial (preferably about the abdominals), we would appreciate it. Who knows? You may even find the infomercial you hate the most being derided by someone like you: a person who has too much time on their hands.