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Weird History Food is going heavyweight on the history of the George Foreman Grill. To many, George Foreman is the 2-time Heavyweight Champion of the World. But to those with an appetite, Foreman was known more for his eponymous grill. We're going to look at the history of Foreman and his famous grill.
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Ladies and gentlemen, in the red corner, weighing in at just a handful of pounds
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we have the reigning champion of In Home Grilling! With its non-stick cooking surface and its patented fat-removing slope
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George Foreman's lean, mean, fat-reducing grilling machine is more famous to some people than the heavyweight boxing champ himself
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But how did this dream matchup of celebrity spokesman and quality indoor meat cooker come to be
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Today, we're stepping into the ring with a heavyweight history of the George Foreman Grill
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All right, touch gloves and get ready for a good, clean fight
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Mostly clean. Those grease trays could get pretty messy. On January 10th of 1949, a champion was born in Marshall, Texas
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His name? George Edward Foreman. His destiny? Indoor grilling. Oh, and boxing, but mostly the grilling
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But before he could hope to one day lend his name to a portable appliance, he had to work his way out from poverty first
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George grew up and went to school in Houston's 5th Ward district. Known by some as the Bloody 5th, the 5th Ward was a rough place to be a kid
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And young George apparently didn't make life any easier for his community
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By his own admission, he had a penchant for bullying other children. And by the 9th grade, he dropped out of school entirely and instead opted to work with local street gangs
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because there's not a lot of money in algebra tests. The victimization of his former classmates provided him with the skill set he needed for a life of crime
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And at the age of 15, George was making his money as a mugger
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Fortunately for fans of heavyweight boxing and fat-reducing grilling machines, this period of his life didn't last that long
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At 16, George was picked up for vocational training by the Lyndon B. Johnson Job Corps
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where he finally got his GED and trained to be a carpenter. It was during this time that George met Doc Brodus, a counselor with the Job Corps
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Brodus just so happened to also be a boxing coach, and he saw fighting potential in George's massive 6'4", 200-plus pound physique
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He soon encouraged Foreman to give the sport a try, and Foreman took to it like blue cheese butter to a freshly grilled steak
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Within just two years of his first fight, George would defeat Poland's Lucian Trella
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Romania's Iona Letse Italy's Giorgio Bambini and finally the Soviet Union's Jonas Sepolis
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winning him the gold medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City
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It was a meteoric rise for a kid who, only four years earlier, was headed towards a life of petty crime
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and foreman waved that star-spangled banner proudly across the ring as the world went wild
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And there's George holding up the American flag in the center of the ring
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before thousands of impressed spectators. He'd go on to win the world heavyweight title in just two rounds from the then-undefeated Smokin' Joe Frazier
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Weirdly, Frazier did not follow in Foreman's grilling footsteps. Down goes Frazier
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Which is a shame. The Smokin' Joe countertop meat smoker would have sold like hotcakes
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Hotcakes he could cook on a George Foreman. For a time, Foreman was unstoppable
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He remained undefeated until the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle where he lost the heavyweight title to Muhammad Ali after an eighth knockout punch After a brief break from fighting Foreman returned to collect some wins and losses over the next handful of years
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But in 1977, at age 28, he retired from boxing. Uh, for the first time
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George had a religious awakening after nearly dying of heat stroke during one of his final matches
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He became a born-again Christian and, in 1978, began preaching as an ordained minister in his hometown of Houston
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In 1980, Foreman even founded his own church, called the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ
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George Foreman don't mean nothing no more. To me, Jesus Christ means everything
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He soon opened the George Foreman Youth and Community Center, a place he hoped would help kids in poverty
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just as he had been helped by the Job Corps years prior. But by the mid-1980s, George was running out of money
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and was facing the potential closure of its youth center. Evangelical preaching is generally more lucrative than boxing
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but not when you're George Foreman. If he wanted to continue to help kids in his community
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he needed a whole lot of money, fast. So after 10 years in retirement
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George returned once more to the ring in 1987. While many had written him off as a washed-up has-been
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he was quick to knock the fat out of their heads. Foreman won 24 consecutive matches after returning to boxing
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suffering his first loss in 1991 when he tried to take back the heavyweight title
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from the undefeated Evander Holyfield. Hey, we get it. We couldn't even beat Holyfield in the Sega game
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In 1994, though, George would get another shot. He entered the ring with Michael Maurer, the decorated heavyweight champion boxer
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and not a Pokemon evolution of the guy who made Bowling for Columbine. And at the age of 45, George became the oldest boxer ever to win the world heavyweight title
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At last, in 1997, George retired from the rain for good, leaving his final match with a record of 76-5
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So where the heck do indoor grills fit into all of this? In 1993, engineering and design duo Michael Bohm and Robert Johnson filed a patent for an all-new way to grill
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Their invention was an electric cooking device with a lower plate that sloped downward at a 20-degree angle
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With the inclusion of this sloped surface, any grease would run right out of the front of the grilling device and into a collection tray below, like a devastating ski slope accident
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The duo then took their newly patented device to trade shows the nation over, referring to it to potential corporate buyers as the fajita express
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They demonstrated how their invention's angled surface would provide the perfect slope for sliding meats into tortilla shells
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This initial design even had a second tray apart from the grease collector
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meant to hold taco shells in place for ease of sliding. Hey, that actually does sound like a great invention
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Eventually, they found a buyer. The pair sold their patent to Sultan, a kitchen equipment manufacturer
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known at the time for their juice extractors and pasta makers. Sultan tossed aside the Fajita Express name and gave their newly acquired product an all-new title
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They called it the Lean, Mean, Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine. They soon sought out a spokesman for its release And they had just the former heavyweight champion in mind Salton attempted to lure George Foreman into repping their electric grill by giving him one to try out for himself
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And by offering him a hefty one-time paycheck. George was no stranger to the spokesman game
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having previously lent his face to brands such as Doritos. I was wrong
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And Meineke discount mufflers. By George, I think he's got it. But he initially turned Salton down
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citing that their grilling machine looked more like a toy than a real kitchen appliance
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We're not really sure what toy he's thinking of. Maybe a real sad transformer? Despite his initial reluctance, Foreman would later joke that he'd meant to get into the grilling business all along
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He once tweeted out that the idea came to him after being knocked out in his 1974 match with Muhammad Ali
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He wrote that a piece of talking meat came to him then in a vision while he was down on the mat
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Few people had been punched so hard they flew straight into a meat dream, that that's why Ali was the greatest
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Another version of the story, probably the actual story, claims that after Foreman shoved Salton's Grill
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into some deep, dark corner of his home, his then-wife decided to try it out for herself
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She made the pair some burgers on it, and the heavyweight champ's mind was changed
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in one juicy, savory instant. Regardless of which story is true, or how many inanimate objects may have talked him
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into the idea along the way, Foreman finally came around to the grilling machine
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after months of rejection. So this machine was designed with George Foreman and the American people in mind that
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hey, we're going to eat what we want, but we're going to knock the fat out. George got back into contact with Salton and said he'd move forward with the branding deal
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but he wanted all new terms from them. Rather than collecting an upfront paycheck for the deal
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he insisted on a 45% cut of all the product's profits moving forward
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Considering how many of these grills could be found in dorm rooms and studio apartments across America in the late 90s, that was a pretty good call
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No dorm should be without my grill. It's great for that late night snack
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Salton agreed to the terms, and the new grill debuted at the 1995 Gourmet Products Show in Las Vegas
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alongside an infomercial that featured footage of Foreman boxing, presumably against giant hamburgers and hot dogs
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But believe it or not, its launch was a relative failure. The first year and a half saw slow sales and little interest in the Foreman grill
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It wasn't until Sultan changed their marketing strategy that things took a turn for the better
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Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only George Foreman! Sultan decided to hang up George's boxing gloves and to play up his life as a family man
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As the father of five sons, all of whom are named George, and another seven daughters
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only one of whom he got away with naming Georgetta, the image fit Foreman perfectly
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So Sultan put the old boxing footage away and instead filmed Foreman in his very own kitchen
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The pivot to sending a film crew to George's house and launching an all-new Dad Vibe commercial
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came together in just one week. It was filmed on a Tuesday and aired that same week
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And demand for the lean, mean, fat-reducing grilling machine exploded by the Monday after
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Salton began to sell their grill by the millions. So if you like your food lean mean and tasty don forget to pick up one In 1996 they sold million worth of grills By 1999 that number had risen to million
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The runoff from that many grease traps could fill a swimming pool, which is presumably another vision George had while lying on the mat
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They began producing different types of George Foreman grills for different markets worldwide, and they even partnered Foreman up with Jackie Chan to try to sell their product in Asia
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Meanwhile, Foreman, thanks to his insistence on receiving 45% of all profits
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was raking in millions of dollars each month. While he'd gotten back into boxing in order to raise money for his youth center
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these cool indoor grilling paychecks gave him a way back out of the ring
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and into a permanent retirement. But Sultan was worried that Foreman would take his newfound fortune
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and ride off into the sunset, with dollar bills trailing behind him like confetti
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They wanted to rearrange their deal with him to ensure that they could use his name in perpetuity
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So in 1999, Sultan bought Foreman out for $137.5 million, more than he ever made as a world champion boxer
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And the champ parted ways with the company for good. George opened up the Foreman Ranch in 1976
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a 300-acre property in his birthplace of Marshall, Texas. And he continues to run the ranch to this day
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The ranch has Icelandic stallions, Arabian horses, goats, cows, llamas, and even ostriches
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And Foreman loves his horses like his namesake grill loves a panini
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Apart from the ranch, he also continues to minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ
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And his Houston Youth Center is bigger and better than ever before. As for the George Foreman Grill, while George Foreman was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame in 2002
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his grilling machine would receive its highest honor in 2011, when the Smithsonian put its 1995 model on display in the National Museum of American History
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By then, the Foreman Grill had become commonplace in households the nation over
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Even with a brief hiccup in 2002, when Salton was successfully sued for price fixing and had to pay out $8.2 million
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the grill's popularity remained steady into the new millennium. It even inspired the central joke for an entire episode of The Office
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where Michael accidentally steps onto his foreman grill and grills his own foot
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I burned my foot very badly on my foreman grill. You burned your foot on a foreman grill
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When you're a reference on a network sitcom, that's when you know you've made it
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Rival grills soon started to pop up left and right. One of these was the Real Deal Grill, a grill sponsored by Foreman's former opponent, Evander Holyfield, which hit markets in 2007
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While Holyfield may have beaten Foreman in the ring, it seems that Foreman finally beat him back in the appliance wars
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But the Foreman Grill? By 2010, Salton had sold over 100 million units worldwide, and they're still being sold to this day
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They now have over 20 different types of grills in their lineup, including basic grills, smokeless grills, and indoor-outdoor grills
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And they've even started selling air fryers and quesadilla makers, too, which, ironically, was what the George Foreman started out as
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So, while the Foreman grill today may not be as talked about as it was only a decade ago, it's not down for the count
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As long as hungry 20-somethings need a way to grill frozen meat in the privacy of their own bedrooms, the George Foreman will remain undefeated
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It's a knockout. Dinner's ready, George
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