June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Billy Mays, the loud, fast-talking, bearded pitchman who became the voice of “As Seen on TV” cleaning products, died yesterday at his home in Tampa, Florida. He was 50.

Mays was found unresponsive by his wife, Deborah, and pronounced dead at 7:45 a.m. yesterday, Tampa police said in a statement. He was suffering from heart disease and may have died of a heart attack, the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s office said in a statement. Complete autopsy results will be available in eight to ten weeks.

A fixture on late-night TV infomercials, Mays, clad typically in a blue shirt, boisterously rattled off in two- minute spots the wonders of products including car-scratch removers and adhesives such as “Mighty Putty.” He was the most successful salesman of his kind, the Washington Post said.

“It is his persona against which all pitchmen will be measured now and in the future,” Bill McAlister, president of Trevose, Pennsylvania-based Media Enterprises Inc., an infomercial company, said in a statement. “Billy worked with determination over the years to develop as the supreme voice of the infomercial industry.”

Mays described his voice as a “fine-tuned instrument, just like a Ferrari engine,” Ajit Khubani, founder of Fairfield, New Jersey-based TeleBrands Corp., said in a telephone interview. Khubani met Mays more than 15 years ago when he was pitching products at boardwalks and state fairs.

‘Knew How to Sell’

“He was not loud at all in person but he knew how to sell,” Khubani said. “He did an unbelievable job at creating a character that people could identify with and people liked and people listened to.”

Mays appeared in infomercials for TeleBrand products such as the “Rotomatic” tool kit. Starting next week, the company plans to air a spot Mays did for the “Jupiter Jack,” a device that turns a car radio into a hands-free phone, Khubani said.

Mays’s influence was acknowledged by a Discovery Channel reality-TV series “Pitchmen,” that premiered this year. In the show, Mays and Anthony “Sully” Sullivan vet inventors’ projects for infomercials. Last week, Mays appeared on NBC’s “The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien” to discuss the show and his pitching style.

The pitchman often began infomercials by saying, “Billy Mays here.” He claimed to use many of the products he peddled. Still, not every product did what Mays promised it would, according to complaints from customers on Web sites such as Amazon.com.

Rough Landing

On June 27, Mays told a Tampa TV station he hit his head while on board a flight that made a rough landing. He also wrote about it on his Twitter page.

“Just had a close call landing in Tampa,” Mays said. “The tires blew out upon landing.”

He was a passenger on US Airways Group Inc. flight 1241 from Philadelphia to Tampa which landed at 2:23 p.m. June 27, according to airline spokesman Jim Olson.

“After all the passengers were off the plane, we didn’t receive any report of injuries,” Olson said. “There were paramedics at hand.”

The autopsy didn’t find any external or internal head trauma, according to the medical examiner’s statement.

Atlantic City Beginning

“Although Billy lived a public life, we don’t anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days,” Mays’ wife said in a statement through the police department. “Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times.”

Mays was born in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, on July 20, 1958, the AP said. He began his sales career pitching various items along the boardwalk of Atlantic City, New Jersey, honing his promotional style.

He gained notoriety for selling household cleaning products, primarily for Denver-based Orange Glo International, including “OxiClean” and “Orange Clean,” in the early 1990s on cable television’s Home Shopping Network. Orange Glo was purchased by Church & Dwight Co. of Princeton, New Jersey, in 2006.

OxiClean, a carpet- and laundry-stain remover, became a household name thanks to Mays, Bruce Fleming, chief marketing officer at Church & Dwight, said in a telephone interview. The product brings in more than $100 million a year in revenue, said Fleming, who had dinner with Mays on June 25 in Princeton.

Mays could make more than $1 million from a spot, Khubani said. “He didn’t typically make that.”

Fleming declined to comment on how much Mays was paid.

To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Vivek Shankar at vshankar3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 29, 2009 15:06 EDT