TV URBAN LEGEND: Hulk Hogan passed on the chance to endorse what turned out to become George Foreman Grills.
It's hard to know for sure, as celebrities sure do make a lot of money on endorsements (and it is often unexpected stuff, like former New York Mets star third baseman David Wright having a piece of Vitamin Water), but outside of probably Michael Jordan and his deal with Nike, it is likely that the second-most successful celebrity endorsement of all-time was George Foreman's The George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine (most commonly known as "The George Foreman Grill"), which launched in the mid-1990s and it soon became something that, like, everyone (especially single guys in their mid-20s) owned.
In the world of celebrities, there is this fascinating subset of anecdotes that you can almost call "Hard Luck Stories." Generally speaking, celebrities will talk all of the time about their GOOD fortune, but a lot of them like to also talk about their HARD luck stories, or sometimes, hard luck for OTHER celebrities, like Matt Damon talking about how he turned down the lead role in Avatar (as well as a significant cut of the film's profits) or in the other type of example, Keanu Reeves talking about how happy he was that Will Smith passed on The Matrix.
It is firmly in this genre of celebrity anecdote that we find Hulk Hogan's story about how he passed on the chance to endorse what turned out to become the George Foreman Grill.
HULK HOGAN'S TWO VERSIONS OF HOW HE MISSED OUT ON THE GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL
Hogan has basically two versions of the story. The first one he debuted on his old reality show, Hogan Knows Best, where he explained, "My children were upset because I always picked them up late at school. So I said ‘I’m going to beat all these soccer moms today’, and I went to McDonald’s, got a cooler, I had everything packed and I got to school around 2:30 p.m. , instead of 3:30 p.m., and now I finally have all the soccer moms behind me and my kids are so glad I got there early. Then I come home and hit the old school voicemail recorder and he says, ‘Hey Hulk, this is Sam Perlmutter, I have a grill and I have a blender and I go call you and George [Foreman] to see who wants it. I wasn’t there to answer the call, so when I called Sam back he said George had taken the grill. So basically, $550 million later, George got the ‘Lean, Mean Grilling Machine’ and I got a blender that when you put in double AA batteries, fart and turn off.â€
Another later version of his story went like this, with Hogan detailing the following conversation...
Agent: “You should get into these things, the kitchen appliances, put your name on something. “
Hogan: “Well, what’s the matter?â€
Agent: “Well, I have this meatball maker. It hammers the meatballs as you squeeze your arm muscles and clench your fists together.
Hogan: “This is fantastic, I want the meatball maker Hulkamania! “
Agent: “What about the other thing? The grill?
Hogan: “Ah, give this to your other client.â€
DID HULK HOGAN SERIOUSLY MISS OUT ON THE GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL?
For the record, Foreman isn't saying whether Hogan's stories are true or not, tweeting on the topic basically "No comment"...
However, it really doesn't seem like the story went down the way Hogan recalled it. Henry Holmes was George Foreman's longtime lawyer, and he explained to the Southern California Super Lawyers Magazine in 2005 how it all went down:
“I think we were getting an e-mail, a letter or a telephone call every nine minutes,†he recalls. “From big to small companies. And with products I’d never heard of. Remember pogs? They were really hot for a while. I had a guy call, he was going on about pogs for like five minutes. I had no idea what he was talking about.â€
A friend and lawyer named Sam Perlmutter, to whom Holmes owed a favor, also eyed Holmes’ flagship client. Perlmutter was interested in getting into marketing and product endorsements, and Foreman suggested a hamburger maker — and Perlmutter found a good one in China: something called “The Lean Mean Grilling Machine.†In the past Holmes had witnessed clients getting lesser deals or being dropped completely after helping launch a product, so he wasn’t after a strict endorsement contract but a joint venture. Foreman would become part owner of the product. Ironically the toughest sell on this concept wasn’t Salton, Inc., the parent company, but George Foreman. Foreman remembers it humorously:
Foreman: How much are they going to pay me?
Holmes: Nothing, George.
Foreman: Nothing? All the money I’m making and I’m gonna do something for nothing?
Holmes: Yeah, but there’s a thing now called joint venture.
Foreman: Joint nothing! I want money!
“I had the grill in my house for months,†Foreman says. “The little thing. I looked at it. Finally I said, ‘I’m gonna try this thing.’ My wife told me she’d already tried it. She told me ‘It’s really nice, makes the meat all juicy and everything,’ and so I tried it and lo and behold it really did work. I called Henry and said, ‘How can I get a bunch of these?’â€
“The early results were modest,†Holmes remembers, “and George’s participation and his checks were modest†— Foreman recalls getting $3,500 here, $3,500 there, and being happy about it — “and then all of a sudden it just blew up. And it became probably the most successful direct-sale consumer product — ultimately retail consumer product — of all time.â€
By 2003 more than 50 million units had been sold, and when Salton, Inc., bought out Foreman’s share in 1999, it paid through the nose: an estimated $137.5 million.
“I should call him Henry ‘Joint Venture’ Holmes,†Foreman says today.
That same basic story, that Foreman was who they were specifically looking for and that he sat on it for months, has come up so many other times in other articles, like this CNN Money article:
Srednick [the designer of the grill] had connections to Foreman through an attorney named Sam Perlmutter, who had experience in the infomercial industry. Perlmutter got the grill in front of Foreman, but a few months later the champ hadn't so much as turned it on. Perlmutter nudged him a little. Finally Foreman's wife cooked a hamburger on it, and she got him to give the grill a try. When Perlmutter checked back, Foreman had an answer: "I like it. I tried it, and it works. Let's do it." Perlmutter considered trying to market the grill on his own but quickly realized he was in over his head, so he went back to Salton. Dreimann, the Australian, wasn't all that familiar with George Foreman, but he thought that having the heavyweight champ of the world behind his product couldn't hurt.
Heck, even a lawsuit involving Perlmuter and Salton supports the basic idea that it was all about getting George Foreman specifically. From the National Review, discussing the lawsuit:
Sam Perlmutter, a Los Angeles attorney, introduced former heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman to the opportunity to endorse a kitchen appliance that later was branded as the “George Foreman Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine.†Commonly known as the “George Foreman Grill,†more than 100 million of the indoor grills have been sold worldwide. Perlmutter entered into a contract with defendant Salton, Inc. to sell the defendant certain George Foreman trademarks and associated goodwill. Salton agreed to pay Perlmutter $5.5 million in four installments of $1,375,000. Salton made the first three payments but defaulted on the fourth. The parties then amended their agreement to permit Salton to make the fourth payment in shares of stock. Section 3(a) of the amendment specified that the shares would not originally be registered under the Securities Act of 1933 and could not be sold until registration took place. Section 3(d) of the amendment further provided that if Perlmutter was unable to sell the shares for the full amount due him, Salton would make another payment in cash or stock to equal the difference.
Upon selling the issued shares, Perlmutter was left with a shortfall of $1,012,563.71. Salton then issued additional shares that equaled in value the shortfall amount. These shares, however, were also unregistered, and thus could not immediately be sold. Perlmutter asked Salton to register the shares, and Defendant agreed to do so, but failed to follow through on this promise; as a result, upon selling these shares, Plaintiff was again left with a shortfall.
Perlmutter subsequently brought claims against Salton for breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and negligent misrepresentation.
When even the lawsuits are pretty clear on the facts of a situation, it's usually a pretty good sign that the facts are the facts.
So, I'm going with the legend as...
STATUS: False
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