Sales Hot for Amish Heaters Made in China

'Miracle Idea' Catching on Despite Complaints That Ads Are Exploitative

By Laura Johnston
Religion News Service
Saturday, March 14, 2009

CANTON, Ohio — It sounds like the beginning of a comedy routine. An Amish miracle heater? Really?

"It's a joke because the Amish couldn't use the heater itself," said Donald Kraybill, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. "It's kind of like Quakers selling Quaker guns. It's sort of an oxymoron."

Even so, Canton company Heat Surge has sold thousands of Roll-n-Glow electric fireplaces.

They're two feet tall, 1,500 watts, wrapped in a mantel of oak ($547) or cherry ($587). And in TV commercials and full-page newspaper ads, they're touted by women in bonnets, men in straw hats and a couple driving a buggy.

"Amish man's new miracle idea helps home heat bills hit rock bottom," declares one ad, fashioned to look like a newspaper article. "You'll instantly feel bone soothing heat in any room. You will never have to be cold again."

It's an enticing prospect this winter, and in this economy. But a $20 hardware-store space heater would likely provide the same amount of heat.

(More here.)