CANTON, Ohio — It sounds absurd. An Amish miracle heater? Really?

“It’s a joke because the Amish couldn’t use the heater itself,” said Donald Kraybill, an Amish expert at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. “It’s kind of like Quakers selling Quaker guns. It’s sort of an oxymoron.”

Even so, that oxymoron has sold thousands of Roll-n-Glow electric fireplaces for Canton company Heat Surge LLC.

They’re two feet tall, 1,500 watts, wrapped in a mantel of oak ($547) or cherry ($587). And in hokey commercials and full-page newspaper ads, they’re touted by women in bonnets, men in straw hats, a couple driving a buggy — and, in some publications, two nearly naked women in bed.

“Amish man’s new miracle idea helps home heat bills hit rock bottom,” screams one ad, fashioned to look like a newspaper article. “You’ll instantly feel bone soothing heat in any room. You will never have to be cold again.”

It’s an enticing prospect in this winter, and this economy. But a $20 hardware-store space heater provides the same amount of heat.

It just doesn’t have the Amish name, or a flickering fake fire.

The Amish brand represents “handmade quality, old-fashioned values, rural charm,” said Erik Wesner, who writes a blog called Amish America.

He calls the heater ads “pretty hilarious. . . . It’s mind-boggling because they’re making associations with things not typically Amish.”

The questions — Is the fireplace really made by the Amish? Are those real Amish people in the ads? — are debated on blogs and consumer Web sites all over the country.

“I’m somewhat suspicious,” Kraybill said. “I think it’s an English (non-Amish) company exploiting the Amish name and image.”

The Canton Better Business Bureau has received 39 advertising complaints (and 238 complaints overall) about Heat Surge since the company was founded in June 2007. All have been resolved, according to the bureau, which toured Amish workshops in Geauga and Holmes counties as part of its investigation into the complaints.

The company employs more than 300 people in Holmes County, said Commissioner Joe Miller, who grew up Amish. That includes English (non-Amish) workers as well as Old Order and the more-liberal Beachy Amish sects, some of whom use electricity in their shops.

“Are they being exploited by this? Absolutely not,” said Miller, who knows the man standing front and center in the ads and says he’s Amish. “It was a shot in the arm this winter,” he said.

In Holmes, workers build the mantels in their own homes and barns, then insert Chinese imported heaters in a Winesburg assembly shop, said John Armstrong, Heat Surge’s chief administrative officer. In Geauga, most of the work is done in a Middlefield shop.

The mantels have a solid oak top and trim, Armstrong said. The sides are a wood-plywood combination with wood veneer — “not the particle board, pressboard you typically see in a Chinese manufacturer in big-box stores,” Armstrong said.

Hence the non-big-box price.

And the marketing philosophy.

Roll-n-Glow ads follow the as-seen-on-TV method, using toll-free numbers promising special deals for customers who call in the next few hours, said A.J. Khubani, president of Telebrands Corp., which also makes the Ped Egg and Clever Clasp, among other household goods.

As the economy has tanked, the rates that TV stations can charge for commercials has dropped. The cheap air time has allowed low-budget, over-the-top commercials usually seen late at night to get prime-time exposure.

“This is what America responds to,” Khubani said.

Jerry Sykora of Brooklyn, Ohio, responded to it. He bought the heater for his son, Paul, for Christmas, and so far, it’s doing its job, allowing Paul Sykora to keep his Parma thermostat at 60, yet stay warm and comfortable.

“It’s a nice-looking piece of furniture,” Jerry Sykora said. “It looks like a real fireplace.”

The success of the Roll-n-Glow mirrors the Snuggie, the blanket-with-sleeves phenomenon, Khubani said. Folks are drawn to the chance to save money and stay cozy.

“They’ve got a good thing going,” Khubani said of Roll-n-Glow maker Heat Surge. “From what I know in the industry, sales on that have been tremendous.”

The tremendous sales originally caused delivery delays, which have since been resolved, according to the Better Business Bureau. Other complaints revolved around the company’s claim that the heater uses less energy than a coffee maker.

The company — which got in trouble with the BBB last summer for selling “free” digital TV converter boxes with $100 warranties — has since dropped the coffee maker claim. It now tells customers the heater costs about 8 cents an hour to operate on the 750-watt setting.

It’s also working on other Amish collaborations, such as an infrared grill on an Amish-built wooden cart, bookshelves and entertainment centers.

“You don’t have to be Amish to make a quality product,” Armstrong said. “The thing about the Amish, however, is that most people at some point in time have come into contact with one of their handcrafted items. People have firsthand knowledge of the quality.”

(Laura Johnston writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)