> It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it.

Your view is very optimistic, you're trying to see the mega-brands in the best possible light. I would almost call it euphemistic. Celebrities don't vouch for a product, they're not reviewers (although they can be paid to pretend to be one), they can't provide neutral or negative feedback. They're advertisers. The ice cream brand could pay them to promote ice cream blended with shredded cardboard for all they care, and because of the celebrity's face on it there would be an uptick in sales regardless of the quality.

If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it. Of course, some good ideas that deserved the light of day may not get appropriately rewarded, especially if the product is good but revolutionary. But I would take that possibility over having our singular, sellout, corporate mass of sludge of a culture dominate everything.

> If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it.

Most products fail. All the products you see in the stores are the result of a massive war that’s constantly being waged by companies fighting to the death.

Anyone serious about selling something either needs to bootstrap the crap out of it on tiny margins forever, or they need to launch their product.

Again, most products fail which often means bankruptcy for their creators. Having someone put their reputation on the line for something good-but-unintuitive is a great way to have consumers become more willing to take a chance on something they might otherwise be skeptical of. The George Forman grill is the perfect example of a bizarre product that benefited from a celebrity endorsement. I seriously doubt a “two sided griddle” is successful at all unless you give people a reason to listen to the sales pitch, and even then to give it a shot.