Entrepreneur Creates Pain Ointment from Emu Oil
Oct. 25 -- "I told them to go jump in a lake!" Jack Hugh McClung fumes, moments after ending a testy telephone exchange with Federal Trade Commission lawyers.
The regulators have been hounding McClung about cure-all claims he made (until recently) in infomercials for Super Blue Stuff.
The skin cream, he vowed, repeatedly and preacher-like, was "guaranteed to relieve all kinds of chronic pain in five minutes."
Bald-headed and plainspoken, McClung, 68, apparently flew under the FTC's radar for almost two years even though he spent as much as $1.7 million some weeks — $46 million, or a spine-tingling 60 percent of sales, through the third quarter of this year — to air the hard-to-miss advertorials, which also starred semi-celebs such as former Major League Baseballer Jim Lefebvre.
"This is the most amazing product you are going to try," McClung raved.
Grandiose claims and testimonials from users helped make Super Blue Stuff an amazing success, with sales that McClung says totaled $77 million through the third quarter, more than triple full-year 2001 revenue.
Although Super Blue Stuff is sold in 365 small independent stores and through a 200-person direct-sales force, a majority of its sales come over the toll-free line McClung broadcasts on his infomercials.
‘Results May Vary’
But now this modern-day P.T. Barnum must dramatically modify his promises of Super Blue Stuff's wizardry as he pushes for even more growth.
After telling the FTC lawyers to take a swim, McClung says, he recently caved and agreed to pay $3 million to atone for past grandiloquence. The FTC refuses to comment.
Now McClung is redoing his infomercials, in which he says only that Super Blue Stuff provides temporary relief of arthritis, muscle strains and bruises.
He's also adding disclaimers, including "individual results may vary," to packaging. "We're just country folks," he sighs. "We didn't know no better."
Super Blue Stuff is made from a witches' brew of ingredients: emu oil, aloe vera and methyl sulfonyl methane (MSM).
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