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" Developing a product in hopes that it becomes &amp;quot;Seen on TV&amp;quot; is an act of faith. Amateur designers in shops and basements across America cobble together prototypes using household items hacked up and rigged with bits of wire, perfecting their inventions for months before bringing them before the infomercial kingpin, arbiter of what is and isn&amp;#039;t seen on TV, Telebrands CEO AJ Khubani. Sitting beneath posters of past infomercial hits like the Windshield Wonder, Khubani and his family hold court in a New Jersey conference room, allowing a couple of dozen aspiring designers each 5 minutes to pitch whatever item they pull out of a duffel bag, briefcase or grocery sack from Reno, Chicago or Mooresville, N.C. With names like the Hanky Tanky Hanger, Showerhands and the Tearless Onion, it&amp;#039;s a shame only about one in 100 Inventor&amp;#039;s Day contributions makes the big time. It helps to come prepared with a thorough pitch\u2014a couple of designers had gone so far as to produce their very own infomercials, played on laptops\u2014but the greatest single demonstration had to come from a little item we hope to see on the tube sometime soon: The Gutter Gremlin. Steve Reuter, in from Dover, Del., brought before the crowd a mock gutter downspout, a bucket of water, a pile of leaves, and his new product in the center of the action. The Gutter Gremlin, a sawed-in-half Wiffle ball hooked by bent wire to a piece of gutter hardware known in the trades as a K-style pop outlet, sat in the top of the gutter downspout to allow water to flow through &amp;quot;even when the gutter is completely impacted with leaves,&amp;quot; Reuter says.  As he poured the bucket of water into his gutter diorama there on the conference-room table, the Khubanis seemed moderately impressed. Reuter explained that his mother often called him over to clean out her gutters. To avoid this task, he put his mind to work developing a tool to reduce the frequency with which her gutters clogged. The Gremlin doesn&amp;#039;t actually prevent a clog, Reuter made clear; it instead allows greater leaf volume to accumulate before a clogged downspout causes the gutter to flood. After witnessing his invention in action, Reuter&amp;#039;s mom encouraged him to shoot for the stars and take the Gutter Gremlin to New Jersey to get that thing seen on TV. Pitching in the conference room while his 5 minutes expired, Reuter elicited weary chuckles with a classic infomercial hook: &amp;quot;You just set &amp;#039;em and forget &amp;#039;em.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s possible that fame and fortune await the Gutter Gremlin\u2014its Awesome Auger utility and Slap Chop styling could combine to make this simple item the next Shamwow superstar. To find out, well, we&amp;#039;ll just have to stay tuned. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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