Wal-Mart Has Made it Big

Forget that Wal-Mart had $256 billion in sales last fiscal year, more than the next three largest retailers combined. Forget that they operate more than 4,000 stores worldwide, employing more than 1.2 million "associates." And lastly, forget that had you purchased $1,650 worth of Wal-Mart stock in 1971 it would be worth more than $11 million today. Wal-Mart has proven itself a huge success because they finally made it to South Park. (Subscription to Wall Street Journal Online required.) Or you can download the episode here. (Bit torrent download.)

This month, Comedy Central's ever-irreverent cartoon "South Park" built an entire episode around a "Wall-Mart" coming to town. Originally met with wild enthusiasm, the new arrival turns the town folk into consumer zombies lured by cheap prices to buy massive quantities of products they don't need. It also turns Main Street into a bombed-out ghost town.
- - -
Wal-Mart does no advertising on Comedy Central, but the chain's Ms. Williams thinks the channel's "South Park" was "right on target" in its episode featuring "Wall-Mart." Desperate to stop their town from total collapse, the main "South Park" characters -- Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman -- go to the store's headquarters to learn where the heart of Wall-Mart is so they can kill it. The heart, it turns out, is a mirror. And the local store the town decides to support instead grows from a mom-and-pop to a Wal-Mart-like behemoth.

Comments

[Marika]

I love that this bit of a message is getting out through South Park - we have no one but ourselves to blame for the superstores that drive out local competition. What panache!