Ten weight-loss ads that make us want to hurl (and watch the pounds melt away!)

Richard Simmons: A source of confusion for boys throughout the 1980s.

Fitness and diet schemes have been around as long as there's been advertising. It's the sale of empty hope -- machinery with limited usage, devices with inflated claims, herbal supplements that skirt FDA regulations. But we know all that, and still we watch. And some of us still buy.

Of course, we don't watch for the info. We watch for the dazzling lack of production quality, the stunningly cheesy spokespeople -- and maybe so we can fantasize, while we're tucked under our Snuggie at 2:30 in the morning, basking in the glow of dead-of-night television, about a miracle pill or a wondrous apparatus that will solve our problems for us without having to leave the couch. In the daylight, though, we can all laugh at just how ludicrous some of these ads really are. Here, ten of our favorite.

10. Hawaii Chair
"If you can sit, you can get fit ..." If that isn't the Homer Simpson American Dream, I don't know what is -- and to ukulele music, no less. How it's not incredibly annoying to continually shimmy while you're trying to get some work done, I have no idea. The repeated pelvic thrusts while holding your hands over your head? I'm pretty sure my office frowns on that.

9. Trimspa
Right before she died, Anna Nicole Smith was included in a class-action lawsuit against Trimspa -- not for this ad campaign, though that might have been a good idea. I mean really: "Wanna Viper?" "Want to play?" "Like my body?" Well, yes, I guess technically, but the price for all three of those is much, much too high.

8. Slim Suit
You can tell this came from the 80s because the product invited consumers to "take it easy, or take it to the max!" The Slim Suit -- essentially a pair of sweats made of trash bags--is designed to make you perspire off the pounds wrestling-team-style. Here's hoping this came with an air freshener zipper-pull. Use carefully, though: the side effects seem to include mullets.

7. AromaTrim
I'm guessing the success or failure of this product has more to do with holding a big hunk of plastic under your nose than it does with any herbal aromatherapy deal. It would probably work with a Tonka truck, too, if you held it under your nose while you were trying to eat something. The herbs that "change the taste" are sort of a bonus, really. Do you want to eat a brownie with a thick plastic disc under your nose? Of course not. Take the plastic thing away so I can enjoy my brownie, asshat.

6. Dual-Action Cleanse
Because really, pooping is the easiest way to lose weight. Temporarily, anyway. More importantly, if you're discussing the size of your four-year-old daughter's bowel movements on national television, you'd better be making lots of money, to pay for all that therapy she'll need.