The Untold Truth Of Flex Tape

This will be very hard to digest, so prepare yourself for some hard truth. The marketing genius and super human we all know as Phil Swift was not always the boat-sawing, universe-saving man he is today. According to Flex Seal Spray Can (a Flex Seal affiliate site that sorta seems like it might be run by Phil?), Phil Swift has been in the marketing and direct sales industry since the '80s. His brother Alan, who gets a lot less air time but is also one of the geniuses behind the Flex Seal and Flex Tape family of products, is a University of Houston graduate with 26 years in business administration. Together, the pair founded Swift Response LLC, which specializes in "high performance products that are easy to use and solve every day common issues in the workplace and home."

So if Phil and Alan Swift have been around for more than a quarter of a century, why, oh why, did they not grace the world with their revolutionary products earlier? Perhaps the world just wasn't ready.

Flex Tape may be endowed with supernatural powers that even Thanos himself would envy, but it's still just a stupid roll of tape. How exactly does a stupid roll of tape gain international fame, its own library of ridiculous memes, and the love and adoration of men and women everywhere?

YouTuber JonTron. Yes, he who hath obtained fame by sitting on his couch and talking about stuff on YouTube decided to sit on his couch and talk about Flex Tape, and the video he made has 35 million views so far. There are literally millions of people in this world who think watching some guy make fun of a roll of tape is a good use of 10 minutes. Then Phil Swift became like a god and Flex Tape became famous and JonTron clearly deserved some kind of kickback for that. Seriously, Phil, you were just a loud guy with a roll of tape pretending to be Billy Mays on late-night television before JonTron came along, you can't at least give him a lifetime supply of Flex Tape or something? Maybe a zombie-proof wall for his front yard or a couple boats you cut up and taped together? Talk about ungrateful.

It will not surprise you to hear that Flex Tape is good for so many other things besides just taping boats back together and fixing leaks. Flex Tape can also be used to subdue a body builder and rip the psoriasis flakes off your body, and seriously, if you don't want to barf then don't go looking for that video.

Other people have used Flex Tape to build unbreakable walls, which seems like it would be a really handy thing to do in the zombie apocalypse when you're really going to need a way to keep flesh-eating corpses out of your yard. So far no one seems to have tried doing anything insanely dangerous with it, which is probably a good thing for Phil Swift and Flex Seal, since no one needs that kind of bad publicity.

Based on what we've seen so far of people's actual experiences with Flex Taped boats, you should probably not try Phil Swift's glass-bottomed-boat-in-shark-infested-waters thing. Or the psoriasis thing because that's just gross (and expensive).

No famous person is safe from the ultimate hazard of success in America: litigation. And also people complaining loudly, publicly, and in Amazon product reviews. "Does not actually work underwater" seems to be the most common complaint. One user also said "the only thing it sticks to is skin."

Still, a few bad reviews on Amazon (36 percent are one-star rating, which is more than "a few,") isn't really the worst part of it. Twenty-six complaints have been filed with the Better Business Bureau, which granted is a pretty small number compared to what the company has probably sold overall, but some of the complaints accuse the company not of false advertising but of overcharging. Some customers say they were sent more product than they ordered, were charged full price for it, and were given no easy way to change the order after placing it.

Finally, there are the class-action lawsuits. Or really, just one dude on YouTube who says he wants to put together a class-action lawsuit because Flex Seal destroyed his pond. Poor consumers. If only they knew, "When the product doesn't perform as expected, it's typically because the product was not applied correctly." Flex Seal wins.

Long, long ago, people figured out they could raise brand awareness with T-shirts and hoodies, which was probably around the same time people realized they could also turn entire cars into high-speed billboards. Flex Seal jumped on the NASCAR bandwagon in 2013 with JD Motorsports, and as of 2018 has been in the sponsorship game for six consecutive years. Now, everyone who watches NASCAR racing gets to have Phil Swift catchphrases on repeat in their brains everytime they see a Flex Seal/Flex Tape car round a corner, so yay.

JD Motorsports is just as gushy about their sponsor as every other normal human with an occasional need to coat, seal, and protect. "I can't thank Phil Swift enough for all of the support over the years," said Johnny Davis, who owns the JD Motorsports team. "They have been a very valuable part in the building of our race team, and their products are used almost daily at our shop." Wait, what? So besides taping a car back together after a crash, Flex Seal and Flex tape get used for regular, everyday car maintenance? Has JD Motorsports actually read the Amazon reviews? Just wondering.

So now you have 17 rolls of Flex Tape, but you just can't bring yourself to saw your boat in half. What else can you do with all that Flex Tape? Fortunately, the Flex Seal blog has some ideas.

Since we know Flex Tape is awesome at sticking to living things, the first obvious choice is to use it as a bug trap. "Hang long strips of Flex Tape in areas you want to minimize bugs," the site suggests. Now, a roll of Flex Tape costs $13 and is only 5 feet long, and you can get 36 feet of actual fly tape for the same amount, but whatever. If you don't like that idea, you can use Flex Tape on your furniture feet to prevent scuffing because cutting circles of super-sticky Flex Tape with your household scissors is way more practical than buying a pack of 181 felt furniture pads that are the same price as a roll of Flex Tape and, you know, actually designed for the purpose.

Okay, so those aren't great ideas — happily, Flex Seal has some car repair tips, too. You can use Flex Tape to tape your license plate to your car because everyone knows license plate holders and screws are for suckers. You can also use it to tape on your rearview mirror, tape your hood closed, and fix your cracked bumper. Yes, it truly is nature's most divine substance. Truly.

If you don't think you can justify spending $59.99 on a cardboard cutout of Phil Swift or $329.99 on a Razor-style Flex Seal scooter (which is fairly similar to the one on Amazon that you can pick up for $29.99 that you could just cover with Flex Tape if you really wanted a Flex Seal scooter that badly), wait around because Flex Seal has some pretty weird contests and giveaways. For Halloween 2018, the company announced a Phil Swift pumpkin carving competition, and just in case you aren't creative enough to figure out how to make your pumpkin look like Phil Swift, they even provided the stencil. (No purchase necessary!)

For fans who may not relish the thought of pulling the guts out of their Phil Swift pumpkin, Flex Seal also sponsored a "big head" giveaway on Instagram — winners received autographed copies of Phil Swift's giant head. "You know it's hard to get ahead in life," (har, har) Phil Swift wrote. "Tell me why you think you deserve my big head. Why should I give my big head to you?" We're sure the competition was totally just about creating brand recognition for Flex Seal and Flex Tape, and that it had nothing to do with Phil Swift's giant, inflated ego ... err ... head.

If you've ever dreamed of becoming internet famous, of earning the everlasting adoration of millions, of becoming the star of terribly written yet somehow hilarious fan-fiction, then you need to invent some tape and star in your own infomercial. Or maybe you have to be Phil Swift to make that work.

Somehow, Phil's winning personality and magical ability to destroy things and then put them back together have made him such a star that people actually write stories about him and post them online for the world to make fun of. "It was time to bond, seal and repair his soul," wrote one fan. In another story, Phil Swift, "The lord of darkness," plots multiverse domination and can only be subdued with "the blessed flex tape."

But wait, there's more ... Phil Swift has also inspired a slough of fan art, most of which feature the words "That's a lot of damage!" or the classic, "I sawed this boat in half!" Fans who just can't see themselves spending hours painstakingly recreating Phil Swift's face or writing bad prose about him can also fill that vacant space in their hearts by joining the Phil Swift Fan Club on Steam, but vows are required: "Pray to Phil Swift daily," "Purchase Flex Tape/Flex Seal until you die," and "Saw any boat you see in half." 

Because evidently there are people who have joked that Flex Tape and/or Flex Seal's other line of amazing products might actually be delicious, Phil Swift felt it was necessary to post a video on Instagram warning fans to keep the stuff out of their mouths. Now, it's not super-clear why this was something that needed saying out loud, but we are living in the Tide Pod era, after all.

Was Phil's video a thinly veiled, "Don't do this, but if you do, make sure you do it on YouTube where it will go viral" sort of attempt at some free publicity? Probably not, but if there's one product that could capitalize on the Tide Pod hullaballoo other than Tide Pods, it's Flex Tape. But whatever — it's stupid to eat things that aren't food. Please don't do it.

It's great to be a meme lord and also the owner of a wildly successful line of products that may or may not work as advertised. But so many normal humans would let that go to their heads! Not Phil Swift, though, who clearly has the vision to see ridicule as an opportunity to sell more Flex Tape and Flex Seal.

On the Flex Seal website, you can buy merchandise ranging from a 10"x12" decal of Phil Swift's head to T-shirts and hats bearing Phil Swift's most-ridiculed catchphrases, like "I sawed this boat in half!" and "That's a lotta damage!" But true fans aren't satisfied with just the company-approved merch, so there are also non-company-approved designs, like T-shirts featuring cans of Flex Seal, Phil Swift's giant head, and Phil Swift with his weapons of boat and bucket destruction. Now, any other self-respecting pitchman might try shutting down those unauthorized mech-sellers, but not Phil, who has the foresight to know that anyone wearing a Phil Swift or Flex Seal T-shirt of any kind is basically a free, walking billboard. So that probably means we'll continue to see unauthorized merchandise for as long as Flex Tape and Flex Seal continue to be A Thing. If the Flex Seal gods provide.