A chain of Montreal weight loss clinics sprouted up in the early 1970s across the city, attracting women with the promise of losing weight without need for diet or exercise.
The Figure Magic chain, which was a knock-off of a trend in the states, made an impressive splash from about 1971 with seven storefronts on the island plus another five elsewhere in Quebec.
Smaller chains like Therma Slim and Lady Stauffer also contributed to the slimming-without-dieting landscape.
The chubby women were wrapped in plastic, administered bandaids with a tiny electrical pulse of put on slimming-belt fat jiggling machines made popular in the late 1950s.
"Lose undesired fat in only 90 minutes without strenuous exercise, strict diet, without expensive pills. You sit on a comfortable couch while the Figure Magic Method does the work for you.. Results guaranteed in writing. Open 10 a.m to 10 p.m."
The clinics appeared to be thriving for a while, as the chain advertised heavily in local newspapers and enlisted celebrity TV personality Rita Bibeau, voted "Miss Television 1971" as Figure Magic's TV spokesperson in 1971.By 1973 the Figure Magic chain boasted 117 salons in an ad, although only it appears their real total was a half dozen in the province with only one left on the island of Montreal.
The chain was doomed after women complained of false advertising in August 1972, as seven told a judge that they felt duped, with their lawyer claiming that he could have found 100 more with similar grievances.
One woman said her husband chided her daily about wasting $300 on a system that gave no results. "I don't like to be fished in or taken for a fool. I used the slimming cream they sold me for $30 and I smelled like a snail."Another customer said she paid $150 for 10 sessions at the studio in St. Laurent. Employees said she had slimmed, but a friend measured her and said nothing had changed. "My clothes were still just as tight on me." She then went to another Figure Magic and got measured and found herself fatter than when she started. They gave her $75 back.
As late as March 1973 the Figure Magic chain was boasting another grand opening but by the next month the company was publishing messy ads disassociating itself from its stores.
In November 1973 Judge Marcel Beauchemin fined owners Gerard Choquette of LaSalle and Alfred Gregory of Brossard $2,500 each while Richard Hebert was ordered to pay $500. They could have been sentenced to up to five years in prison.
La Presse press distanced itself from the chain it once sold ads to in great number by stating that the chain mostly bought ads in the English newspapers.
Peter Beverly Myers, a 35-year-old Austrlaian who had a Therma Slim spa at Beaver Hall Hill and Dorchester as well as others in Israel, Belgium and Spain, pleaded guilty to defrauding the public of $100,00 and was given a one day sentence and fined $15,000 and deported to England.