TORONTO (AP) – Philip Kives, the tireless TV pitchman whose commercials implored viewers to “wait, there’s more!” while selling everything from vegetable slicers to hit music compilations on vinyl, has died at age 87.
Samantha Kives said Thursday that her father died a day earlier after being hospitalized with an undisclosed illness.
Kives became wealthy after founding marketing company K-tel International, which sold Miracle Brush hair removers, Veg-o-matic vegetable slicers and compilation albums with such titles as “Goofy Greats” among numerous other products.
Through it all, Kives mostly remained in his beloved Winnipeg and always balanced work with family life, his daughter said.
“He would literally leave in the middle of a business meeting to come watch us play in a tennis tournament,” she recalled. “The commercials were also a family affair. A lot of the commercials he shot, he’d bring us kids in … and we’d be actors in the commercials.”