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Doomed Supermarket Display

 Doomed Supermarket Display
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 Doomed Supermarket Display
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Doomed Supermarket Display
 Doomed Supermarket Display
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DoomedSupermarketDisplay
 Doomed Supermarket Display
comment
Rather than the shelves that are standard practice in real life, fictional shopkeepers seem to prefer to display their wares in rickety, ceiling-high pyramids stacked in precisely the place a runaway shopping trolley is likely to crash into them.
Their other major vulnerability is to someone (often an oblivious young child) taking an item from the bottom level, thus causing the rest of the pyramid to collapse spectacularly.
Some supermarkets do have displays like this, but generally they consist of non-fragile items and are held up by cardboard support structures.
A common variant is to see someone just finish compiling the large stack only to have something bad happened to it. This tends to result in an "oh man" response from the stacker.
The reason the stack has to be knocked over is due to The Law of Conservation of Detail. Unless you're watching a four hour slice of life documentary on the daily life of a grocery clerk, it's unlikely a production will focus on something mundane like a clerk stacking cans, unless it's a set-up for something funny that's about to happen to those cans.
Commonly seen in a Grocery Store Episode.
For other things that are almost certainly likely to be destroyed when they appear, see Ashes to Crashes, Priceless Ming Vase, Exploding Fish Tanks, Doomed New Clothes, Fruit Cart.
 Doomed Supermarket Display
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2024-03-13T05:31:28Z
 Doomed Supermarket Display
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2024-03-13T05:31:28Z
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DBTropes
 Doomed Supermarket Display / int_160b4833
type
Doomed Supermarket Display
 Doomed Supermarket Display / int_160b4833
comment
Parodied in one episode of Clone High; A tired Abe lets go of his shopping cart at the supermarket, letting it slowly stroll over to a big display of animal crackers with dramatic music playing. Joan shouts at him warning him about the cart, despite the fact she could've easily gotten it herself, and the cart just makes the entire display crumble after a small nudge from it.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
 Doomed Supermarket Display / int_16b97fcd
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One time on The Bob Newhart Show, Bob and Howard went grocery shopping. Howard took something (possibly a jar of pickles) from the bottom of a food pyramid and the stack didn't fall over, flummoxing Bob. Then a few more people did the same thing. Finally Bob took something off the top, which made it fall all apart.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
 Doomed Supermarket Display / int_222a8847
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A variant appears in RoboCop (1987): a thug walks into a small convenience store and demands the owner empty the cash register and open the safe. The owner protests they don't have a safe. The thug kicks a large pyramid of beer cans, which collapses to reveal the safe.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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The Simpsons:
There's a parody of a bulk-buy warehouse that was packed to the rafters with these. A highlight is Barney knocking over a full-size human-shaped maple syrup bottle and thinking he's killed a woman.
In another episode, when Lisa attempts to skateboard she ends up bearing down on two stacks of salsa jars - one "mild" and one "hot and spicy". "Please mild please mild please mild..."
In 'Krusty Gets Kancelled', Luke Perry is fired from a cannon as part of Krusty's Komeback Special. One of the buildings he flies through is the Kwik-E-Mart, where Apu is about to finish off a pyramid of acid jars. Luke rockets through the jars, sending the entire stack to pieces. After a moment of stunned shock, Apu throws the last jar to the ground in frustration.
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A subversion occurs in the Full House episode, "Play It Again, Jess". Michelle is about to take a roll of paper towels from the bottom of the pyramid, but Uncle Jesse stops her and takes one from the top of the pyramid instead... and he still knocks it over.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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Raising Arizona has one of the messiest examples, with the displays in question getting blown apart by a double-barreled shotgun wielded by none other than the grocery store's butcher.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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Happens in the The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh episode "A Pooh-Day Afternoon" when Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, and Christopher Robin search a supermarket for Skippy, a dog that the latter of the 4 friends is pet-sitting.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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Refrenced in a Calvin and Hobbes strip
In another strip, we actually see him knock over one of these when he's pretending to be a Tyrannosaurus, with his mother bemoaning that she can't take Calvin anywhere without him causing trouble.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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Big Ben Healy's sporting goods store in Problem Child has an enormous glass display box filled with tennis balls that reaches up to the rafters. No points for guessing what Junior plows into when he steals Little Ben's car.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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Sonic Boom:
A subversion occurs in the episode, "Dude, Where's My Eggman?". Dr. Eggman tries to return a burnt umbrella, but the store's owner refuses to give him a refund. Outraged, Eggman kicks the bottom two cans of a pyramid... and the rest of the cans completely stay stacked, much to his surprise.
Played straight in the episode, "Counter Productive", where Knuckles takes a single apple from a pyramid of baskets, causing the entire pyramid to fall over.
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Mr. Men: Mr Clumsy sees a pyramid pile of cans of soup, and he takes a can. Not a can from the top of the pile. Oh no, not Mr. Clumsy!
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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The 1955 MAD feature on "Supermarkets" shows a malfunctioning shopping cart crashing into a pyramid of soup cans.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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MAD Magazine has played with this over the years.
In a Don Martin strip, a male shopper picks a can from the top of a pyramid, and it collapses. He picks a can from atop a second stacked display, and this time it causes a different stack of cans to topple. Puzzled, the man grabs a can from yet another pyramid... and it causes the store to collapse!
In a Dave Berg piece, two old ladies shopping realize that the supermarket raises their prices around the time of month that seniors receive Social Security checks. They also eliminate their discounted dented-cans section. One of the ladies then rams her cart into a can pyramid, producing a nice selection of dented cans.
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In the Everybody Loves Raymond episode, "The Sitter", Debra tells Ray that she didn't get the grocery shopping done because she had to leave the store in shame after the kids pulled down the salsa display.
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In the Arthur episode "D.W. Gets Lost", D.W. enters the store's security room and begins playing around with the cameras to find Mom on the screens. Her antics first knock out an employee in the Video Department followed by toppling a display of tennis balls arranged in a pyramid. When she sees customers tripping over her mess her response is "Look at all those clumsy people!"
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Doomed Supermarket Display
 Doomed Supermarket Display / int_80d5283a
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In one Fred Basset strip a passing shopper pets Fred and his wagging tail knocks over a pyramid of boxes.
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The Loud House:
In "Cereal Offender", Bobby makes a display of paper towels to look like Lori's head, which she is quite impressed by, but Lincoln stumbles into it and knocks it all over in his struggle to get his favorite cereal.
Played with in "High Crimes". Flip makes a pyramid of Flippee's for the party organized by Scoots, but no sooner is he done or Pop-Pop and Bernie running past the table cause the whole thing to collapse.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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The Pink Panther short "Supermarket Pink" uses this as a recurring gag. Store employee Big Nose has stacked a pyramid of cans which is first knocked over when he accidentally stumbles into it. Then it's toppled again by the classic shopping cart; after he's rebuilt it, the Panther proceeds to take cans from out of the middle of it, leaving Big Nose stranded there propping the remaining cans up. It's heard toppling off-camera for the final time seconds later.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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During JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Joseph is affected by Bast, a Stand that turns him into a magnet. As he chases down Bast's user, all sorts of metal objects cling onto him. This includes a pyramid of mango cans being displayed on the street outside a market.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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One Dennis the Menace (US) strip has Dennis knock down a pyramid of cans by rolling a grapefruit at it, much to Alice's shock. Dennis then says "But in bowling, that would be a strike!"
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In Young Sheldon S4 E17, Georgie tries to buy beer without an ID and asks for Sturgis to vouch for him. Sturgis is stacking soda cans when he sees Georgie and waves at him, and in doing so knocks down the cans. An embarrassed Georgie then slinks away.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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This is the basis of a challenge on Impractical Jokers where the guys intentionally crash into a display and try to get a bystander to vouch for it being an accident so they can sue the store. The items have ranged from breakfast cereal boxes to personalized snacks (Ja'Crispy chips and Captain Fatbelly cereal).
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In Mad About Yous Season 5 episode "The Touching Game"; at one point Jamie's baby bump knocks over a cereal display.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Karate Choppers", as part of his running duel with Sandy, Spongebob ambushes her at the grocery store and sends her flying towards a pyramid of tin cans. She just barely nudges the cans, and after a brief pause, they all collapse onto her.
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On the Silly Symphonies short "Mother Goose Goes Hollywood", Laurel and Hardy appear as Simple Simon and the Pie Man. Simon picks a pie from the bottom of a pile. Surprisingly, the pies land neatly back in place. The Pie Man tries it himself, and the pies splatter all over the place.
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: Veruca Salt uses a trolley to knock over a pyramid of gift-wrapped chocolate Easter eggs during a fit of pique in "I Want It Now."
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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A 2 Stupid Dogs episode with a "Freaky Friday" Flip had one of these. As a Running Gag, it was repeatedly destroyed immediately after supermarket employee Cubbie had just finished fixing it.
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Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em: In "The Hospital Visit". Frank removes an apple from the bottom row of a display. Nothing happens until he closes the door on the way out, whereupon the entire display collapses onto the floor at Elisabeth Sladen's feet.
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In the My Dad the Rock Star episode "Metamorphic Rock" Rock Zilla, never having gone grocery shopping by himself before, rides around the store in a shopping cart and knocks over a can display (and a bunch of other stuff in the store)
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In Stuart Little it is stated that Stuart's birth parents (who are mice) were killed in a grocery store incident where a stack of soup cans fell over and crushed them. The bodies had to be identified by their dental records.
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Found in hide's PV for the song Misery, part of which consists of hide "destroying" (of course, it was staged) a grocery store in Los Angeles.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 Doomed Supermarket Display
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Comedy Tropes
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Doomed Supermarket Display
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