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Bulk Buy Only

 Bulk Buy Only
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 Bulk Buy Only
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only
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BulkBuyOnly
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Ironic situation where characters spend an entire episode trying to get some minor product or object, but succeed only if they are willing to take excessive or ultimately useless amounts of the object with them. They typically become sick of the booty but are unable or unwilling to part with it.
 Bulk Buy Only
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2023-04-11T23:59:20Z
 Bulk Buy Only
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2023-04-11T23:59:20Z
 Bulk Buy Only
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_1b386512
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_1b386512
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In one installment of the Ranma ½ manga, Cologne is sold a veritable mountain of horrible-tasting noodles. Rather than throw them away or demand a refund, she holds an all-you-can-eat contest, and hidden in one special order is a "Noodle of Strength," said to confer the strength of 100 men. Eat up! Just as expected, not only do the male members of the Nerima Wrecking Crew eat and fight over the horrible noodles, but several Muggles, too! Hilarity Ensues. In the end, the MacGuffin noodle was an even worse kind: it provided the digestive strength of 100 men, and Ranma, the winner, is so hungry he's given more of the original, horrible noodles.
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_261c8d3f
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The Simpsons:
To quote Marge Simpson: "That's a good price for twelve pounds of Nutmeg!"
Bart once bought Marge a gallon of cheap perfume for her birthday.
 Bulk Buy Only / int_261c8d3f
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_2ee053b1
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Bulk Buy Only
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Yes, Your Grace: The two resources that can be doled out to help petitioners are gold and food supplies. The player can only use gold to buy supplies or sell supplies for gold when certain merchants show up. Those merchants will only be selling a fixed, and fairly large, quantity of food supplies as a package deal, and will only buy supplies for gold in the same manner, with no option to buy less.
 Bulk Buy Only / int_2ee053b1
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 Yes, Your Grace (Video Game)
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_341c02e9
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_341c02e9
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A variant appears in Batman Begins when Alfred comments that the components for Bruce's Batman mask (the ears and hood) will have to be ordered in large lots - ten thousand of each component - in order to avoid suspicion ("At least we'll have spares"). The first shipment of the mask proper turns out to be flawed and unusable, obliging them to order another ten thousand, albeit at a discount offered in apology for the flaw.
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_43a9c333
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_43a9c333
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Cowboy Bebop's infamous "Mushroom Samba" episode had the crew unintentionally end up with a large stash of shiitake mushrooms. The crew ends up having to eat the mushrooms in a variety of dishes because they have no other food available. Possibly inspired by the Monty Python's Flying Circus skit below.
 Bulk Buy Only / int_43a9c333
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_44836236
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_44836236
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The avoiding suspicion variant appears in The Dogs of War when Cat Shannon has to buy 400,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition and 300 mortar bombs for a small commando raid so he can make the order as part of a legitimate arms deal, and even that's regarded as unusually small. Ironically Cat does find a use for this arsenal—supplying the soldiers of the ruler he actually puts in charge instead of the Puppet King his employers wanted.
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_455e3038
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_455e3038
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King of the Hill: In one episode, Hank Hill needs a new spark plug, but the Mega Lo Mart only has them in packs of twelve. Hank insists he only needs one, then rips one out of the pack and tries to buy it alone. He gets really annoyed when he's told that's not allowed and is forced to buy the whole pack.
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Bulk Buy Only
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In a variant, Rincewind of Discworld has accumulated a number of do-nothing titles at Unseen University, for each of which the University porter provides him with a bucket of coal to heat his office each day... even though for all his positions, he only has the one office. If Rincewind asks for less than that, or he fails to burn every last piece, the university won't provide him with any coal at all. Thus, Discworld's most put-upon "wizzard" must strip to his underpants and sweat atop a mountain of coal every summer if he wants to avoid freezing to death in winter.
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_4d04208
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_4d04208
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In an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, Aunt Bee goes on a cost-cutting kick and discovers a way to save 10 cents a pound on meat—by buying an entire side of beef, 150 pounds. To make matters worse, her freezer proceeds to break down.
 Bulk Buy Only / int_4d04208
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_6e1d5f36
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_6e1d5f36
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Played for laughs in Farscape when the crew go to a planet to get food and come back with "a thousand units" of "dried food rectangles" (basically, crackers.)
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_7884ec15
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_7884ec15
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The characters of Seinfeld once attempted to start a bakery which sells only the tops of muffins, but spent most of the episode trying and failing to dispose of the bottoms. They even try giving them to the homeless shelter, which turns them down because, apparently, it would be insulting to the homeless people to be fed muffin stumps. (You might think they could have saved themselves the trouble by just baking the tops, but this is handwaved in the episode: the tops don't taste right unless they are baked with the bottoms attached.)
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_9888f901
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On Daria, Jake accidentally orders a bulk load of hot dogs, and the family has to eat several hot dog recipes over the course of the episode. Eventually Jake uses them for an Eating Contest.
 Bulk Buy Only / int_9888f901
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Bulk Buy Only
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The Thunderbirds episode "Ricochet" has one of the staff of a pirate satellite complaining that there's nothing to eat on board except Honey Crunch Crispies. His partner replies that as a major advertiser the company gave them a year's free supply.
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_a0500a06
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Bulk Buy Only
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Rugrats: In the episode The Stork, Stu ends up ordering 144 eggs just to make sure they have enough.
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Bulk Buy Only
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In the first episode of Dogstar, Mark Clark unwittingly agrees to move an entire Pacific island to New Earth. This includes a huge amount of bananas. After he damages their sacred statuary in transit, the Islanders pay him with him the bananas. This results in the Clark eating nothing but bananas, prepared in increasing unusual (and disgusting) ways, throughout the episode.
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_b458a65
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Bulk Buy Only
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In Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe, a university student's attempt to procure a single condom becomes a Trojan Gauntlet that ends with him acquiring two gross of them. He is then stuck with the problem of how to dispose of them.
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Bulk Buy Only
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In Monty Python's Flying Circus, the bandit Dennis Moore steals lupins from the rich and gives those lupins to the poor. Eventually, the poor get fed up with having to live on such dishes as "braised lupin in lupin sauce." This isn't because Dennis can only get lupins in large quantities; he just doesn't know what else to steal. Given that the rich nobles also value the lupins highly (one keeps a lupin stashed in her garter for safe-keeping), it may simply be that lupins are considered a valuable commodity for no comprehensible reason (think the Dutch "tulip bubble"), while the poor are the only ones sensible enough to question their worth. Then again, this is Monty Python, so try not to overthink it.
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Bulk Buy Only
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The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted: A military troop ship is forced to spend several months eating nothing but heat-and-expand sausages. Don't feel too bad, most of the troops are willingly invading an Actual Pacifist planet.
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_cffa1bda
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_cffa1bda
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Put to hilarious use in Haruki Murakami's short story The Second Bakery Attack. The narrator and his wife wake up starving in the middle of the night and set out to rob a bakery, but have to settle for a McDonald's because it's the only place open. At the same time, the narrator flashes back to a previous bakery robbery he and a friend had committed in college, in which the baker had allowed them to take as much as they wanted as long as they agreed to listen to a full Wagner record.
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_d4efb984
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Bulk Buy Only
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An episode of The Golden Girls, Sophia gets a membership to a Price-Club like store called "Shopper's Warehouse," where this was the hook, you got bargains, but had to buy things in large quantities. During the episode, she bought 20 cases of sardines, four gross of toothbrushes (which is over 500.)
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It's Walky!!: Once Joyce and Walky finally push the metaphorical beds together, they go out to buy some condoms, and do it in such an awkward and clueless manner that the cashier eventually pushes them into buying a whole box so that none of them will have to go through this again for a long time.
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 Bulk Buy Only / int_fa5dc503
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Bulk Buy Only
 Bulk Buy Only / int_fa5dc503
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Minilife TV: In "Abel's Story", Chris has some trouble with a merchant in the Oni Region who sells boxes of apples and carrots and refuses to let him buy only a few individual ones. However, he gets the upper hand on the merchant by paying for a single apple and carrot and running off with them in hand.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 Bulk Buy Only
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Money Tropes
 Bulk Buy Only
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Plots
 Cowboy Bebop / int_33af2adb
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Bulk Buy Only
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Bulk Buy Only
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Bulk Buy Only
 Yes, Your Grace (Video Game) / int_33af2adb
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Bulk Buy Only
 Dogstar / int_33af2adb
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Bulk Buy Only