The car broke down—Damitol! You're being audited by the IRS—Damitol! Your Significant Other has dumped you for another other—well then, make that a double Damitol!
No prescription is needed for this all-purpose antidote to the travails of everyday life. Made of cinnamon candy, Damitol is a gag gift in the Pet Rock tradition, one that's making its promoter, Kyla Laine Drummond of Bellevue, Wash., a very wealthy 24-year-old. Damitol sells for $3.95 per bottle in novelty shops and gift stores, and in 12 months Kyla has hawked $500,000 worth of the placebo. Although Damitol was actually invented by Steve Merritt of Ann Arbor, Mich., Drummond bought all the rights to the popular pill last year. In the works are a Damitol divorce formula, an anti-guilt variety for unsuccessful dieters and an extra-strength 1040 version for those April 15 headaches.
Drummond's first adventure in the yuk trade, "Diet Shampoo" (for fatheads, get it?), came five years ago. "When I told my mother I wanted to market it," recalls Kyla, "she cried and said, 'Why can't you be normal?' But I knew I was going to make a million dollars."
So Drummond raised $60,000 by selling stock to friends and relatives and says that she was "stunned" when her company, K'Laine, successfully marketed 617,000 bottles of the stuff at $5.00 a pop. K'Laine of Redmond, Wash, now has a full-time staff of nine and 125 sales representatives across the country.
Some of the novelty queen's other hits are How About a Roll in the Hay (a dried, glazed wheat roll in a box full of hay at $3.95) and SnoreBan (a Rube Goldberg-like anti-snoring device at $4.95). And then there's her biggest seller next to Damitol, Foul Air Refreshener Tank at $3.95, a spray marketed under its apt if graphic acronym. "I can't keep it on the shelves," complains Drummond. "But yes," she adds guiltily, "I was embarrassed to carry it." Relax, Kyla, no need to quibble with the sweet smell of success.
Your Reaction
