(MONEY Magazine) – If you're a TV viewer who mindlessly flicks through the channels with a remote control, the blazing car pictured above may be a familiar sight. It's a demonstration for Liquid Lustre car wax ($34.90) featured on Incredible Breakthroughs, a 30-minute commercial thinly disguised as a knockoff of ABC's old That's Incredible television program. An almost identical scene, for a $34.90 goo called Auri, appears on another example of televised hucksterism known as Amazing Discoveries. These and dozens of other program-length ads are examples of infomercials -- a business that now generates $500 million a year in product sales and has attracted the fishy eye of the Federal Trade Commission. The programs -- if you can call them that -- peddle everything from stain removers to anti-baldness treatments. They are now seen by thousands of viewers each week on more than 800 local broadcast stations and such cable networks as Black Entertainment Television and Lifetime. Viewers can purchase the products by dialing a toll-free number and charging them to a major credit card. The FTC, though, isn't buying. Barry Cutler, director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection, says the agency is concerned about ''confusion over whether they are programming or advertising.'' In response, the latest infomercials -- including the shows named above -- have disclaimers pointing out that what follows is a commercial message. So far, the FTC has taken action against seven infomercials. In one action, Twin Star Productions of Scottsdale, Ariz. agreed to stop airing commercials for a male impotence ''remedy,''a baldness ''cure'' and a so-called diet patch -- an adhesive disk attached to the skin that supposedly produces weight loss. The company and its manufacturers also agreed to refund $1.5 million to dissatisfied viewers who bought the products. By infomercial standards, the claims on Incredible Breakthroughs and Amazing Discoveries are fairly tame because their products are mundane. But whatever these ads lack in greed appeal they more than make up for in theatrics: somehow you can't take your eyes off the screen when the earnest Amazing Discoveries host Mike Levey gets his crisp, white shirt squirted with axle grease, ink and iodine by ''guest'' Ian Long -- a paid spokesman for the $34.90 stain remover HP9000, made by Brauns-Heitman of Warburg, West Germany. Or when the wide-eyed host -- who is also the producer -- of Incredible Breakthroughs, former get-rich real estate guru Tony Hoffman (MONEY, April 1986), undergoes similar torture to demonstrate a $34.90 miracle potion called Stainarator. Wonder where these obscure products come from? Infomercial producers scour houseware trade fairs around the world. Despite the shows' breathless-sounding names, though, the products are not always brand-new discoveries. For instance, HP9000, trading under the name Hascherpur, has been a household staple in West Germany for at least 25 years. The bottom line: Are the products really effective? We've found a few HP9000 users who swear by the stuff, and Stainarator does seem to remove most stains. But MONEY has one ink-soiled shirt that resisted the powers of both cleaners.