The Untold Truth Of Suzanne Somers' ThighMaster
As the world has mourned the loss of Suzanne Somers, who died on October 15, 2023 at the age of 76 of breast cancer, her legacy has become ripe for re-examination. Among the various facets of her career — sitcom star, bestselling author, wellness and longevity guru — there remains one thing that's continued to loom large over it all.
That, of course, is the ThighMaster, the gimmicky fitness device that Somers hawked relentlessly in TV infomercials during the 1990s, marketed to women as a way to keep thighs firm and toned. Somers may not have invented the gadget, but there's no denying that she ran with it, making the ThighMaster one of the top-selling as-seen-on-TV products of all time — and making herself millions of dollars in the process. And while there have been many other fad-like fitness products sold on television — ranging from the Shake Weight, to Tony Little's Gazelle 360, to the Ab Roller — none of them have become so ingrained in the pop-culture zeitgeist as the ThighMaster. "Suzanne told me once, she said, 'I think I'm going to be remembered for the ThighMaster. It's going to be on my tombstone,'" the late star's husband, Alan Hamel, once told People.
In the years since its peak success, Somers may have shifted her focus to other areas, yet she never severed ties with her signature product. To discover the fascinating story of this thoroughly unique apparatus, read on for a deep dive into the untold truth of Suzanne Somers' ThighMaster.
The ThighMaster originated in Sweden
While Suzanne Somers' name has become synonymous with the ThighMaster, the device is actually the brainchild of someone else entirely, Swedish physical therapist Anne-Marie Bennstrom. And while the ThighMaster is intrinsically associated with the 1990s, its origin story actually dates back a few decades earlier.
In the early 1960s, Bennstrom was treating injured skiers who'd fractured their legs, and realized that while their damaged limbs healed, the uninjured legs experienced muscle loss due to inactivity. "There were no walking casts then; all they could do was lie there with the one leg elevated," Bennstrom told the Orlando Sentinel. To prevent that from happening, she came up with a crude device using two wooden boards, an automotive spring, and a leather strap, that could be used to exercise a skier's uninjured leg while convalescing. She called her contraption the V-Bar, which caught on with physical therapists. It wasn't until the late 1980s, however, that she received an offer about marketing her invention to a wider market. "I always knew it would sell," she said. "Because it works."
Bennstrom died in 2018. As her obituary in the Idyllwild Town Crier pointed out, she co-founded a star-favored wellness retreat in Malibu called The Ashram, where she was among the first to set calisthenics to music — something she taught to Jane Fonda, forming the basis of Fonda's best-selling aerobics videos. Bennstrom was also something of a celebrity herself, appearing on several talk shows, including "The Tonight Show."
The surprising connection between the ThighMaster and the mood ring
Along with pet rocks, mood rings sold big during the 1970s. The rings, which changed color by sensing adjustments in body temperature, were brought to the market by California entrepreneur John Reynolds. "Everybody thought it was a fad ... but it was actually based on science," he told The Orange County Register. In the late 1980s, Reynolds discovered the V-Bar, immediately recognizing its potential for the burgeoning home fitness industry. He showed the device to marketing exec Pete Bieler. "It was kind of a dowdy-looking product," Bieler — who changed the name to the ThighMaster — said of the original V-Bar, noting that Reynolds revamped the design, making it colorful and more attractive to the eye.
With a prototype ready to go, Reynolds and Bieler next looked for a celebrity to partner with. After considering the likes of gymnast Cathy Rigby and "Dallas" star Linda Gray, they decided to approach Suzanne Somers about endorsing the product. When Bieler paid a visit to Somers and her husband, Alan Hamel, to make his pitch, Somers was immediately sold — and Bieler recalled the moment in a brief excerpt of his 1996 book, "This Business Has Legs," published in The Orange County Register. "'Peter,' she whispered in my ear," Bieler wrote, "'I just want you to know how excited I am about this project. ... I'm telling you, this is going to be big. I'm going to make you so much money.'"
Suzanne Somers' ThighMaster proved the power of infomercials
With the newly redesigned ThighMaster ready to go, and Suzanne Somers onboard as the product's celebrity pitchwoman, the next step in the plan was advertising the product via a blast of TV infomercials. Cheap to produce and inexpensive to air, informercials were all the rage in the early 1990s, essentially TV ad spots disguised as entertainment — and channel-surfing couch potatoes couldn't get enough of them.
"We sold 10 million ThighMasters right out of the gate," Somers said of her informercial's immediate impact, discussing the ThighMaster's success in a 2020 interview with Entrepreneur. She also credited the clever tagline that had been created for the product. "'You just put it between your knees and squeeze,'" she recalled. "It was the right product, the right place, the right timing, the right spokesperson — the right everything. It was a perfect storm."
Of course, the media landscape has changed significantly since then, and infomercials no longer hold the same kind of sway they did in their 1990s heyday. However, Somers insisted that, regardless of the platform, true success comes from selling a product that people legitimately find useful, not tricking them into buying something that isn't. "Always tell the truth," she told CNBC in 2014. "The public is smart, and they can smell BS."
She revealed the truth behind that iconic informercial
The original ThighMaster informercial has gone on to become downright iconic. In fact, in 2014, Suzanne Somers was inducted into the Direct Response Hall of Fame (direct response being a fancy term for informercial) for her contributions to the industry.
In the opening seconds of the original 1991 infomercial, viewers see a set of female legs walking, from the waist down, with a male voice offscreen saying, "Great legs!" The camera then pans up to reveal those legs belong to Suzanne Somers (her husband, Alan Hamel, provides the voice of her offscreen admirer). She then goes on to reveal that those shapely gams are the result of using this remarkable new product. "I used to do aerobics 'til I dropped," Somers tells viewers. "Then I found ThighMaster."
As it happened, the idea for that opening came from an actual exchange between Somers and her husband. As she told Entrepreneur, she had just purchased a pair of $500 Manolo Blahnik shoes, which she loved. She worried, however, that Hamel would be upset by her indulgence, so she decided to nip that in the bud by showing him how great they looked on her. "So I walked out of my dressing room in my underwear and I said to my husband, 'Like my new shoes?' And he said, 'Great legs!' And I went, 'Oh my God, that's the commercial!'" she said.
The inventor of the ThighMaster concocted another fitness contraption
Anne-Marie Bennstrom's V-Bar may have evolved into the ThighMaster, yet that wasn't the only fitness-related product that she invented. In her 1993 interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Bennstrom revealed that she'd recently created another exercise device, which she called the BodyBall — described as a large, round ball imbedded with soft spikes, intended to be rolled around various parts of the anatomy. "Stimulation, blood flow," she explained while providing a demonstration. "Adjust the spine, massage the lower back, roll it down your legs."
Unlike her deal with the ThighMaster, for which she had yet to receive a nickel — "My end comes in after the net," she explained — Bennstrom had come to far better terms for her new invention. "And this time I'm taking 50 cents each right off the top," she said of the ball, which retailed at $19.95. Because of the success that Suzanne Somers had experienced with the ThighMaster, Somers was the first person Bennstrom approached about her new invention. Somers, however, decided to take a pass. "Said it wasn't sexy enough for her," Bennstrom claimed.
Undeterred, Bennstrom enlisted another celebrity: Dennis Weaver, best known for portraying a cowboy cop in the 1970s crime drama "McCloud." "When he heard we were going to market it, he said he'd love to do it. He says it makes him feel soooo good," said Bennstrom, revealing the actor's signature move on the ball was something he'd dubbed the "Weave Wave."
Suzanne Somers didn't mind the ThighMaster becoming a late-night punchline
Thanks to the ThighMaster's success, its infomercial became so ubiquitous that it became the basis of jokes on TV sitcoms, popping up in such TV series of the era as "Designing Women," "Murphy Brown," and others. Meanwhile, talk show hosts including Phil Donahue and Jay Leno joked about the ThighMaster on their shows. For her part, Suzanne Somers once made a surprise appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman," leaping from her seat in the audience of the Ed Sullivan Theater in reaction to a "Three's Company" joke in one of Letterman's top 10 lists, brandishing a ThighMaster, and holding it above her head triumphantly.
Even President George H.W. Bush — in a speech he delivered during the 1992 White House Correspondents' Dinner (as reported by Tulsa World) — joked about the product, offering a mocking reason why his press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, had cursed out reporters. "But understand he'd had a bad day," quipped the president of the not particularly fit Fitzwater. "Earlier that morning he'd shattered his ThighMaster."
Somers took no issue with the ThighMaster mockery, as she was a firm believer in the notion that there's no such thing as bad press. "It doesn't matter to me as long as they mention it," Somers told Entertainment Weekly at the time, jokingly adding, "Maybe it's funny because our mothers always told us to keep our legs together. And this is a legitimate reason to move your legs back and forth."
Does the ThighMaster actually work?
Underlying all those jokes about the ThighMaster may have been an assumption that the device, like many products hawked on infomercials, didn't actually live up to its advertising. Suzanne Somers, however, continually insisted that she used it daily, and that it was responsible for her enviable figure. "It's like Kleenex," she told Entertainment Weekly, revealing she carried one with her in her purse in order to do some thigh-squeezing on the fly. "It's cheap and it works," she declared.
In 2018, Men's Health writer Jeremy Glass decided to put the ThighMaster to the test. As he wrote, opinion on the product was divided. Using the ThighMaster as recommended targets one small area of the body — a practice known as spot training, which has been hotly debated in terms of its actual effectiveness.
However, Glass decided to plow ahead and give the ThighMaster a shot. After using the gadget for about 15 minutes, he was heartened the next day to feel his muscles were a bit sore. And while he couldn't point to any solid benefits after using it for a solid week, neither did he have any complaints. "You grunt, you squeeze, and you sweat ... but you're also sitting in front of the TV the entire time," he explained. In fact, Glass pointed to the ability to multitask while enjoying a ThighMaster workout. "I am not ashamed to admit that I ate BBQ pork at the same time," he wrote.
The ThighMaster isn't just for thighs
One of the most overlooked elements in the classic ThighMaster infomercial is that the device can be used to exercise other parts of the body. "Want to tone your upper chest and arms?" Suzanne Somers asks viewers, while a man is using a ThighMaster to perform a variation on bicep curls at the same time a woman is using hers to perform chest exercises. "ThighMaster will give you excellent results."
In fact, anyone itching for a workout — and no access to fitness equipment save for the ThighMaster — can follow a routine laid out by Fitday. In addition, the fitness site A Wellness Body explains how to use a ThighMaster to pump up the biceps, by using both hands to hold the device in front of the chest, before bending the elbows to pull the ThighMaster toward the chest.
The key, as with any exercise, is to ensure that the movements are being done in a precise, controlled manner so as to avoid injury. As fitness trainer Ellis Francis pointed out in A Wellness Body, the ThighMaster has experienced mixed reviews as an overall exercise device for the entire body but does have its proponents. "Some enthusiasts find it highly beneficial for targeting their inner thigh muscles and have experienced improvements in their leg strength and stability," Francis wrote. "Others appreciate the versatility of the tool, which can be used for exercises targeting various muscle groups, including the arms, chest, and upper back."
Suzanne Somers gifted ThighMasters to other celebs
While she was starring in the 1990s sitcom "Step By Step," Suzanne Somers also made a cameo appearance in director John Waters' 1994 comedy "Serial Mom." In an interview with People, "Serial Mom" star Kathleen Turner recalled Somers sending her a gift after they'd worked together — and it was right on brand. "Two weeks after we wrapped the film I received a ThighMaster from her and she signed the box," Turner recalled. "I laughed so hard," she added. "She made us all laugh."
Decades later, Somers gifted a ThighMaster to Khloé Kardashian, who reacted ecstatically in a 2021 post she shared via Instagram Stories. "You guys, my birthday came early this year because look at what I got. I got a f***ing ThighMaster signed by Suzanne Somers! And it says, 'To Khloé, come and knock on my door!'" Kardashian said. "I don't think you guys understand, I could never use this, because I need to put this in a f***ing plexiglass box. I cannot believe it."
Meanwhile, when Somers paid a visit to the home of Courteney Cox in 2022, the "Friends" star took to Instagram to share a video in which she was grilling up some turkey burgers on a barbecue while Somers stood next to her. As the camera pans down, viewers see that both Somers and Cox are squeezing ThighMasters between their legs at the same time. "Cook and tone," Cox joked in the caption.
The ThighMaster has never stopped selling
While most people might assume the ThighMaster is a fad product that faded away when the 1990s segued into the 2000s, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the ThighMaster has remained an enduringly popular product that's continued to be manufactured and sold — perhaps not in the numbers experienced in its heyday, but still turning a profit. ThighMasters have also continued to be up for grabs on Somers' website, and those who haven't thought about the product in decades may be surprised to learn that there have been various iterations of the device available over the years.
One of these was the ThighMaster Vibrato. "And now, ThighMaster has a surprise," Somers teased in an updated version of the original informercial. "It vibrates!" Judging by that video, the addition of vibration to the ThighMasster didn't add anything to its efficiency at toning thighs. However, Somers told HuffPost Live in 2015 that there were some other benefits to the vibrating model. "It's also great — I know it's weird — for kegel [exercises]. You know, to keep that muscle tight, which actually makes sex more enjoyable. So there's just a lot of uses for this little thing," she said. "If you pull up on your core, if you think about it, you can keep that tight, and I think that's something that women should do for your own pleasure."
The ThighMaster's success also led to the development of a spinoff device targeting the derriere, dubbed the ButtMaster.
Suzanne Somers made many millions through the ThighMaster
Not only did the ThighMaster pave the way for Suzanne Somers' eventual evolution into wellness guru — it also made her ridiculously wealthy.
Appearing on the "Hollywood Raw" podcast in 2020, Somers was queried by host Dax Holt about how much money she thought she'd earned from the ThighMaster on its own, apart from all her other varied business ventures. According to Somers, those ThighMaster earnings were substantial. As the star explained, she and her husband, Alan Hamel, wound up buying out the other partners in the ThighMaster business, and owned the product "outright" by that point. "We had partners — 50/50 — and they got drunk on money when it all started selling," she explained. "They overspent to the point where they could no longer afford to be in their side of the business, so we bought them out. We have 100 percent."
She estimated that, by that point, about 15 million or so ThighMasters had been sold. Holt then pulled out his calculator and did the math; at $19.99 each, those 15 million ThighMasters would have raked in a staggering sum of just under $300 million. "Yeah, but I spent a lot," Somers joked. "You should see my clothes."
The ThighMaster opened some surprising doors for Suzanne Somers
The ThighMaster opportunity came along at just the right time for Suzanne Somers. After her notorious firing from "Three's Company" sent her to Vegas, where she reinvented herself as a nightclub performer, her return to television with "Step By Step" coincided with the launch of the ThighMaster.
In fact, had it not been for being fired — because she dared to ask for a salary that was equal to that of co-star John Ritter — Somers would have been perfectly content to have remained a television actor, with every intention of staying in her lane. "I did not plan to be this person. I really liked being Chrissy Snow on TV. I didn't plan to be the unofficial first feminist when I demanded equal pay," she told Entrepreneur. "... It was unfair, but life isn't fair and you have to get over things and move forward."
As a result, she wound up earning far more money than she ever would have made on sitcoms, and she owed it all to the ThighMaster. "You know, I've written 27 books on health," Somers mused. "I've done 16 or 18 years of series television, I've given lectures — and the thing I am best known for is the ThighMaster!"