Deadly competitor of Snuggie and Slanket is now off the market

We've given Snuggies a hard time since the early days of BrandFreak with good reason: Namely, mass-marketed monk robes are hilarious. We've also expanded our blankets-with-sleeves coverage to include the Slanket, which has since been immortalized by Salma Hayek on 30 Rock. Now, we have to give credit where credit is due. First, these comfy robes (which we likely won't hear from again until the weather turns cold) helped everyone realize just how powerful direct response TV can be. The effect has been amplified by a down economy where people want to feel cozy for cheap and get a free reading light to boot. Still, for all of the goofiness of these products, at least they don't kill people. The same can't be said of Blair LLC's chenille robes. At least six people have died due to these comfortable but highly flammable robes, which are made in Pakistan. The Consumer Product Safety Commission and Blair issued a recall of 162,000 of the robes. So now both Slanket and Suggies can take the liberty of marketing themselves as comfortable, warm ... and safe.  

—Posted by Kenneth Hein

NBC's '30 Rock' gives its latest batch of free love to the Slanket

The NBC show 30 Rock has a well-earned reputation for trying to pass off product placements in a tongue-and-cheek manner, even though some of the placements, like the infamous McDonald's McFlurrygate incident earlier this year, apparently weren't pay-for-play deals. The latest product to get ironic placement is the Slanket, the forerunner to the Snuggie. In last week's episode, Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon, was seen sporting the Slanket several times, including once in her office (at 7:44 in the video above), where she says defensively, "It's not product placement. I just like it." (That's apparently true. According to Gizmodo, Fey bought Slankets for everyone on the 30 Rock staff.) The coup de grace, however, is at the end of the episode, where Salma Hayek's character lays into Fey/Lemon with the following oughtta-be classic line: "Lemon, isn't there a Slanket somewhere that you should be filling with your farts." Yet another use for the self-proclaimed "best blanket ever."

—Posted by Todd Wasserman