Billy Mays plus a bug bazooka equals one gutsy pitch

SAFETY HARBOR — The bearded star of OxiClean TV spots pointed the ominous-looking black PVC pipe gun at the windshield of a new Cadillac.

"This is a bug bazooka," Billy Mays bellowed. "It's filled with hundreds of bugs."

Foom. Splat.

That's the guts of a two-minute infomercial headed for TV this summer touting a new heavy-duty windshield wiper.

With a couple of squirts and wipes, his double-finned GatorBlade dispatched the soggy mess of bug juice. On the opposite side of the glass, Brand X … well, you get the idea.

"I've been getting the product and the money together to take it market since 2001," said Zach Richey, a 30-year-old Lutz inventor who called earlier versions the Viper and BugsBeGone. "We'll price a pair at $19.95."

Even after a barrage of infomercials, chances of success are slim. Thanks to the high cost of TV time, only about one in six infomercial pitches ever becomes profitable. But the parade of televised pitchmaking marches on in spite of the economy.

"We're busier than ever," said Anthony Sullivan, president of Tampa-based Sullivan Productions. "But the bug bazooka is craziest thing I've ever done."

At a $45,000 film shoot in Philippe Park on Thursday, GatorBlade went up against a homemade propane-powered potato gun adapted to fire 100 mph salvos of live crickets steeped in a reeking stew of mealworms. Producers wanted love bugs. But this year's crop proved too thin to trap.

They blew through 3,000 crickets in eight takes. There were malfunctions and a misfire that littered a craft services food table 30 feet away with crickets. But a paint ball gun held in reserve never was needed. Asked before one take if the crickets were dead, bazooka prop master Justin Stamper replied: "Some are."

Mays, who works on commission, has nine infomercials running now and expects to have 14 by Labor Day.

Sullivan is best known for a pitch that sold 6-million rubber-bristled Swivel Sweepers ("dog hair, cat hair, long hair, short hair, my hair, your hair: The Swivel Sweep gets it all"). He teamed up for the GatorBlade spots with old pal Mays, a 49-year-old Odessa resident.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.