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April 16, 2013 6:56 PM   Subscribe

Ship My Pants (SLYT, PepsiBlue)
posted by ThePinkSuperhero (69 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Pepsi Blue Light Special. C'mon. The joke is RIGHT. THERE.

(Also, this made me giggle like a child. Drawers.)
posted by ColdChef at 6:58 PM on April 16, 2013 [28 favorites]


Damn you and your genius.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:01 PM on April 16, 2013 [5 favorites]


I loved this ad way more than I thought I would. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised Kmart had the guts to run something so edgy.

I can't recall the last time I heard something that sounded like "I SHIT THE BED" in a national advertisement.
posted by mathowie at 7:01 PM on April 16, 2013 [4 favorites]


Kmart still exists?
posted by Sys Rq at 7:02 PM on April 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


This commercial has convinced me of the unique value proposition that kmartâ„  brings to my shopping experience. By referencing the similarities between "ship" and "shit", they've shown themselves to be a hip and "with-it" brand that's relevant to the unique needs of my generational cohort.

Thank you for bringing this brand to my attention! I should check to see if they're on Facebook, because I love engaging with my favorite brands in a way that adds value to the consumer story.
posted by truex at 7:06 PM on April 16, 2013 [51 favorites]


Saw this earlier in the week. The thing that makes it is that all the performances are great.
posted by dobbs at 7:06 PM on April 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


I'm kind of surprised Kmart had the guts to run something so edgy.
Kmart still exists?

Reverse the order of these two statements for the most likely rationale.
posted by Ardiril at 7:07 PM on April 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


That's funny. I was listening to a radio spot for Fresh & Easy this morning. They really went hard after the "Effin' Easy" bit. Oh yeah ok, it's official, here we go: It's about time my life was F & Easy.
posted by phaedon at 7:08 PM on April 16, 2013


It's the hugging at the end that gets me. Why is there hugging?
posted by Stynxno at 7:08 PM on April 16, 2013 [4 favorites]


There is hugging at the end because this was a thing crafted by the emotionally-dead in an effort to tap into the economic potential of "the millenials," who seem to posses a sort of meta-ironic sincerity.
posted by truex at 7:11 PM on April 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


THERE SHOULD ALWAYS BE HUGGING ohgod
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 7:11 PM on April 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


I loved this ad way more than I thought I would. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised Kmart had the guts to run something so edgy.

I thought for sure it would be "web-only", but my wife has seen it on TV.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:15 PM on April 16, 2013


isn't the past tense of ship shap?
posted by mexican at 7:19 PM on April 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Cool, but Amazon Prime has free two-day shi--ing on everything.
posted by etc. at 7:22 PM on April 16, 2013 [4 favorites]


There is hugging at the end because this was a thing crafted by the emotionally-dead in an effort to tap into the economic potential of "the millenials," who seem to posses a sort of meta-ironic sincerity.

Do you think you're being profound in recognizing that this is an advertisement and that they are trying to sell us something?
posted by empath at 7:26 PM on April 16, 2013 [23 favorites]


I thought it was pretty funny.

I read an article about it - somewhere - I don't know - they had a quote from this woman lifted from Facebook about how it was offensive, and how they shouldn't air it, and how she couldn't let her kids watch it, and I was just, like, you know, seriously?

Lighten up, Francis.
posted by kbanas at 7:26 PM on April 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


Metafilter: where I go to watch commercials.
posted by dis_integration at 7:34 PM on April 16, 2013


Metafilter: Lighten up, Francis.
posted by asnider at 7:35 PM on April 16, 2013 [11 favorites]


I love it when stores I never visit and/or products I'll never buy have really clever ads, because then I get to laugh AND I get to feel like I'm winning over the advertisers!

Yes, it's a small feeling of victory. Sometimes I need those.
posted by xingcat at 7:35 PM on April 16, 2013 [6 favorites]


SHUT THE Front door.
posted by Rhaomi at 7:36 PM on April 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


Metafilter: where I go to watch commercials.

It must have been difficult to have been forced to watch this.
posted by kbanas at 7:39 PM on April 16, 2013 [5 favorites]


Do they have a hardware department? Because they could be shipping bricks.
posted by zippy at 7:40 PM on April 16, 2013 [27 favorites]


Poop jokes are edgy now? Someone alert the five year olds.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:45 PM on April 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


The hug at the end is reminiscent of Welcome to Costco; I love you.
posted by triceryclops at 7:50 PM on April 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Needs a Steve Jobs lookalike talking about shipping your pants to some dude who is cowering.
posted by bukvich at 7:57 PM on April 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


: "I loved this ad way more than I thought I would. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised Kmart had the guts to run something so edgy.

I can't recall the last time I heard something that sounded like "I SHIT THE BED" in a national advertisement.
"

"You bet your sweet Aspercreme!"
posted by ShawnStruck at 7:58 PM on April 16, 2013


I guess shipping people to the store is out of the question --- "We ship you not."
posted by empath at 8:08 PM on April 16, 2013 [5 favorites]


If you're already at Kmart why ship your pants
posted by Beardman at 8:14 PM on April 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


Poop jokes are edgy now?

If they're edgy, you need more water and fiber.
posted by zippy at 8:20 PM on April 16, 2013 [6 favorites]




There is hugging at the end because this was a thing crafted by the emotionally-dead in an effort to tap into the economic potential of "the millenials," who seem to posses a sort of meta-ironic sincerity.

HAHA. I work in advertising though sadly not on this because it is awesome. I assure you people who work in advertising are not "emotionally dead." Spend any time around me in person or even read most of my Metafilter comments - I am like all feels all the time, man. And we're all like that. A lot of people who work in advertising, it's a day job for creative types, even those whose roles aren't "creative" by label. And they are damn good at what they do. Like the people who made this. So enough of that now.

See, lots of feels.
posted by sweetkid at 8:28 PM on April 16, 2013 [17 favorites]


I hate when I'm shipping and it gets stuck at the border. So to speak.
posted by Kabanos at 8:54 PM on April 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


I SHIT MY DRAWS!
posted by roboton666 at 8:59 PM on April 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Wow, this takes me back to when our town had a K-Mart. The store manager was famous for being a stingy asshole, but people shopped there anyway, and boy was it bad. K-Mart made Walmart look upscale. Gone for more than a decade now, ripped out and replaced entirely by a Home Depot.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:15 PM on April 16, 2013


My wife and I played and replayed the "I shipped my bed" guy over and over, howling. He's so happy.
posted by mwhybark at 9:18 PM on April 16, 2013 [7 favorites]


My parents shopped at kmart in the early 80s when they couldn't get credit, so they used lay-away. Now that banks give credit cards to pretty much anyone, I guess that's kind of a thing of the past.
posted by empath at 9:20 PM on April 16, 2013


Adding ROU Ship My Pants to my Culture fan-fic name list.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:21 PM on April 16, 2013 [6 favorites]


I used layaway in college to buy shoes... I'm so glad I'm making more money now.
posted by nile_red at 9:25 PM on April 16, 2013


I like that good feeling you get when you know that something you've ordered is on its way. I call it the peace of ship.
posted by Rock Steady at 9:28 PM on April 16, 2013 [5 favorites]


I think a ROU would be Ship Your Pants.
posted by zippy at 9:30 PM on April 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


GSV Ship My Pants, operating in concert with ROU Ship Your Pants
posted by mwhybark at 9:36 PM on April 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


I saw it linked a whole bunch of times with comments about how edgy it was before I finally bothered to watch it, thinking, how edgy can it be, it's a K-Mart commercial. Pretty edgy, as it turns out. I laughed.

"so they used lay-away. Now that banks give credit cards to pretty much anyone, I guess that's kind of a thing of the past."

It is a thing of the present, and growing, thanks to the economic downturn; K-Mart, being one of the few places that still offered layaway, saw a surprising upsurge in use the past couple years. It's also a thing where people who are secretly Santa on the inside go pay off other people's layaway as a holiday surprise. In a lot of the articles I've seen, secret layaway-payer-offers (payers-off?) have said that their parents used layaway or they used it when their kids were younger and they knew what it was like to struggle to give children a Christmas.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:37 PM on April 16, 2013


Joined by Superlifter Duchamp's Fountain

Stream Class
posted by zippy at 9:42 PM on April 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


Best ad since Sofa King got chased from the air by those prudes at the FCC.
posted by inturnaround at 9:49 PM on April 16, 2013 [8 favorites]


Holy ship, this is fantastic. I haven't thought about Kmart in ages. When I was a kid Kmart meant the Trax shoes that were affordable for my parents to keep all us kids shod, but were embarrassing as hell to wear to school when all the other kids wore Nikes (rhymed with Mikes). There was the dark and foreboding wood-paneled and smoky restaurant in the back of the store. A trip to Kmart usually ended with Marathon bars from the checkout line, then a big plastic sleeve of ham sandwiches and red pop in styrofoam cups from the deli counter inside the front door, to enjoy on the way home.

Latch-hook craft kits. Model airplanes. Sporting goods. Hardware and auto parts. I guess I kind of grew up with Kmart, and this ad is wildly incongruent with all these long-forgotten memories of the Kmart experience. It's kind of ship-my-pants awesome.
posted by Balonious Assault at 10:26 PM on April 16, 2013 [8 favorites]


PANTS X BED OTP
posted by egypturnash at 11:33 PM on April 16, 2013 [3 favorites]


I worked at a Kmart as a teenager and they had a little cafe in the back with terrible food. I wonder if any of the stores still have that? Even if they did, I doubt they ship sandwiches.
posted by orme at 2:38 AM on April 17, 2013


I think you are responsible for shipping your own sandwich.
posted by Gronk at 2:40 AM on April 17, 2013


Well, this was a bit ship.
posted by MartinWisse at 3:28 AM on April 17, 2013


There was the dark and foreboding wood-paneled and smoky restaurant in the back of the store.

This and the marathon bars ref took me right back to my local Kmart.
posted by safetyfork at 4:38 AM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


My wife and I played and replayed the "I shipped my bed" guy over and over, howling. He's so happy.

When you're that age, a good ship on a regular basis makes you a happy camper...

don't ask me how I know
posted by HuronBob at 5:13 AM on April 17, 2013


Oh homophones, is there anything you can't almost be?
posted by blue_beetle at 5:31 AM on April 17, 2013 [12 favorites]


SOFA KING EDGY!

(edit: inturnaround beat me to it. Get in there!)
posted by davemee at 5:45 AM on April 17, 2013


A big plastic sleeve of ham sandwiches

I know, right? They were ham sandwiches made on hamburger buns, and you could buy them in stacks, all sleeved up like those factory-made bagels you can find in the grocery store by the Wonder bread. Except they were (presumably) made on site, and sold out of a little deli case at the front of the store where they also had a glowing box of soft pretzels and an Icee machine, among other strange and mysterious offerings. Back then you had to ship your Kmart meals yourself, but that was never a problem. Sometimes they arrived before you even made it home!
posted by Balonious Assault at 5:56 AM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Our website is so confusing to find things, and you're so incompetent at using computers, and we're so bad at stocking our stores that we made a funny commercial to reassure you that we're still willing to take your money for inferior goods!
posted by jefflowrey at 5:58 AM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: where I go to watch commercials.

Metafilter is where I go for a break from watching commercials. I literally watch commercials for a living - my current beat is teleshopping/infomercials - for compliance purposes, and we'd be unlikely to approve this over here.
posted by mippy at 6:16 AM on April 17, 2013


I literally cannot find a single ship to give about the reasons or strategy behind this ad (sorry). It just made me giggle like a kid and reminded me that however much my birthday is fast approaching, I don't have to grow up just yet!
posted by greenish at 6:54 AM on April 17, 2013


If you're already at Kmart why ship your pants

The point of the ad is that if any Kmart store doesn't have what you're looking for, like it's out of stock, the store will order said item for you from Kmart.com and ship it to you for free. The commercial isn't the only piece of clever marketing.
posted by guiseroom at 6:56 AM on April 17, 2013


I look forward to a future Mefi Meetup with the Debbie Downers in this thread where we can sit around spotting the people in the bar who are there because of emotional problems and acknowledging we'll never see each other again and are only talking right now because of the chemical effects of alcohol on our brain.
posted by yerfatma at 6:56 AM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Not saying this is art (and not saying it isn't) but this is kind of the heart of the "can you enjoy the art and not care about the artist's intent" question. Does it exist as a piece of comedic film/theater apart from its commercial purpose?

I miss art school. Can we sit around all afternoon eating Little Debbies and drinking coffee and discussing this?
posted by JoanArkham at 6:58 AM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


A meta-ironic twist would be to have a clueless character declare "LOL! I have defecated in my underthings!", followed by chirping crickets and dirty looks.
posted by dr_dank at 7:14 AM on April 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


This commercial is both bold and greasy.
posted by Catblack at 7:16 AM on April 17, 2013


Understand that if you keep it greasy, it goes down easy.
posted by yerfatma at 7:17 AM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Poop jokes are edgy now?

To be fair, we're talking about K-mart.
posted by asnider at 8:54 AM on April 17, 2013


This reminded me to re-listen to Todd Glass's advice for Kmart.
posted by mullacc at 10:31 AM on April 17, 2013


Do they ship only within the US, or also to other incontinence?
posted by ericbop at 12:43 PM on April 17, 2013 [9 favorites]


I hear K-Mart's back-end database is sharded and runs under the strain of a heavy load.
posted by zippy at 1:46 PM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


The thing that makes it is that all the performances are great.

That's also what makes it a bit depressing (I have a relative who does TV commercials). All that talent .. to sell crap.

I worked at a Kmart as a teenager and they had a little cafe in the back with terrible food. I wonder if any of the stores still have that? Even if they did, I doubt they ship sandwiches.

Holly's Cafe?
posted by mrgrimm at 1:47 PM on April 17, 2013


My god I had totally forgotten about those cheesy restaurants in the back with their dark wood laminate tables and the red vinyl booths. Starbucks inside a Target is no great innovation.
posted by bendy at 7:53 PM on April 17, 2013


Ship just got real.
posted by Drexen at 1:38 PM on April 18, 2013


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