The TV Hat looks like some thing out of a “SNL” sketch, but it’s no joke.
The cheesy As Seen on TV ad for the $30 hat — essentially a black curtain hanging from a baseball cap with a ludicrously long bill — has quickly become the hot new viral video.
According to inventor and vice president of SKM Industries George Korper, 1,000 TV Hats were sold at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, where the product was first introduced. Since then, Korper reports that “thousands, but not hundreds of thousands” of the hats have been shipped to happy customers.
The kooky hat even attracted the attention of Jimmy Kimmel, who featured it in a gag video during “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
The TV Hat works with iPhones, iPods, Droids and Flo TVs. The device gets popped into a special pocket at the end of the hat’s bill, with a custom lens sliding into place to magnify the images for a “personal theater” effect. Korper says the TV Hat is particularly popular among sports fans looking for the up-close-and-personal ballpark experience while watching games at home. (He suggests streaming games via the iPhone’s MLB.com app.)
“It looks kind of jerky,” Korper admits. When he wears it in public, he says he expects “people will laugh at me, but that never happens . . . as outlandish as it might appear, it really works for a lot of people.”