Maybe it was the impending new year and all that auld lang syne-ing, but sometime in early December I started to get those pangs of nostalgia for the old ways.
The past, of course, always looks sweeter bathed in sepia tones, which may explain why my eyes widened when I walked down the as-seen-on-TV aisle of a local store and stumbled upon a true classic from years gone by: The Clapper.
I had to have it, if only because everything about the Clapper is wonderfully absurd: the concept, the name, and of course, the jingle. Sing it with me: “Clap on! [clap clap] Clap off! [clap clap] Clap on! Clap off! The Clapper!”
Grainy footage of Ron Popeil enthusiastically pitching the Veg-O-Matic may seem to be the iconic image of the infomercial’s humble beginnings. But no bygone call-before-midnight-tonight spot is as searing as the original Clapper commercial.
You know what I’m talking about–the profoundly elderly woman with the crazy white hair lying in bed and flailing her hands in what we are to believe was an audible clap. That sounds harsh, but Joseph Enterprises, distributor of The Clapper, knows there’s retro gold in that slightly disturbing image; decades later, a three-second clip of Grandma is used in the updated Clapper spot.
The Clapper is billed as “the sound activated on-off switch,” and its design is, like so many infomercial classics, ingeniously simple. The palm-size Clapper plugs into a standard wall socket, and it has two outlets for lights or appliances. With electric devices plugged into the Clapper, a rhythmic clapping of the hands is supposed to turn the flow of electricity on or off.
For the cameras, the sweet old lady successfully shuts off her 1970s TV and bedroom light. So how did the $19.99 Clapper perform in the 21st Century? Sadly, technology–and home construction practices–have mostly passed the Clapper by.
Let’s start with the TV. The woman in the commercial uses The Clapper to silence the scratchy white noise on her TV set after the station signs off for the night. When was the last time you saw a station sign off?
But 24-hour channels aren’t the Clapper’s problem; electronics are. With the advent of cable boxes and remote control, modern televisions aren’t designed to be turned off by cutting the power. In fact, program guides are digitally stored in some TVs and are lost when the power goes out.
And the Clapper is of limited use in shutting off lights. My wife has a habit of crossing the bedroom and getting under the covers without turning off the overhead light. But a Broadway show’s worth of clapping isn’t going to darken the bulbs. They’re controlled by a switch, not an outlet.
Is the Clapper completely obsolete? Well, certainly some homes are lit with plug-in lights, and the Clapper would work with most bedside lamps (although you’re on your own if, to avoid reaching over and turning a switch, you clap loudly and wake your partner). And we did find one use for which the Clapper seems well suited: the prickly task of turning Christmas tree lights on and off.
The new-and-improved Clapper now has two outlets–so we also plugged in a 4-foot-tall light-up snowman that my 11-year-old demanded to buy. With the new Clapper, two claps turned the tree lights on and off, and three claps controlled the snowman.
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At least they did occasionally. We found that The Clapper inexplicably registered some claps, but not others. Although the sound sensitivity is adjustable, we never found a setting that consistently worked.
And with the unit controlling two devices, those multiple claps became annoying. In the commercial, lights and radios turn on instantly after two claps, but that wasn’t our experience. With the new design, the Clapper pauses for about a second after two claps, listening for a third clap before powering the two-clap outlet. Too often, in attempting to control the tree lights, we would clap twice with no apparent response, then conclude that The Clapper hadn’t registered the claps. We would then clap twice again, only to end up turning on the snowman. It was funny the first few times. But only the first few times.
And just as a solid clap would often be missed, the Clapper also occasionally heard clapping where there was none, such as when my teenager would bound down the stairs with house-shaking fury. It became a game to turn the lights on and off by running up and down the stairs or slamming the front door.
OK, it’s far from perfect. But to me, the Clapper is pure novelty, and maybe that’s enough. So this product deserves a nod for its kitsch value, and I can see limited situations in which it might be worthwhile.
But as a serious electric-appliance controller, the Clapper gets no applause from me.