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Now 38, and self-styled world's largest maker of bar bells, Mr. Hoffman stands 6 ft. 3 in., weighs 247 lb., measures 49¾ in. around the chest, 35 in. around the waist, 30 in. around the thighs, 17½ in. around the biceps. Even so, the FTC questioned some of Mr. Hoffman's before-&-after advertising. Furthermore, it questioned the propriety of using the bodies of professional strongmen to illustrate an advertising tale told by a satisfied customer. It did not, however, question the practice of retouching photographs to bring out the muscle or show manly hair where none grew naturally.
To justify his claims, Mr. Hoffman last week took his stable of champion strongmen to Washington for the final hearings in the FTC's Docket No. 2542. One strongman was Robert L. Jones who runs a Philadelphia subsidiary of Mr. Hoffman's York Bar-Bell Co. and can perform the unduplicated feat of hand balancing on ten Indian clubs. Once up on the clubs, he drops them two by two until his weight rests on four clubs through his thumbs and two fingers. Another performer before startled Commission Examiner Robert Samuel Hall was Anthony Terlazzo, Olympic world champion featherweight weight-lifter who broke his own record in Paterson, N. J. fortnight ago with a total of 765 lb. in three Olympic lifts.
Bob Mitchell, whose specialty is letting a Ford truck run over his stomach, did not have facilities for that exhibition last week, but he showed Examiner Hall how to get into the crab position from flat on his back with a man on his stomach. At one point Terlazzo and Mitchell leaped on the table, kicked aside the briefs, put on a muscle dance. Mr. Hoffman, not to be outdone, stood on his thumbs.