Costco, Barbie, Bill, Blunders & Billions

Author

Luke
June 30, 2023

Welcome back to another wild edition of Monkey Business. If you like it forward it to your friends. If you don’t like it send it to people you don’t like. I don’t care, just help this little mustard seed of a newsletter grow. Alright let’s get into it my fellow baboons.

Ok maybe Costco membership sharing isn't quite as aggressive as Netflix password sharing was but Costco has decided it's gotta end. So to all you 20 somethings who are sneaking by on your parents insurance and Costco membership one of those is coming to an end…

The much hyped Barbie Movie coming out this summer continues its marketing blitz in the hopes of mirroring Disney's multipronged revenue model (I.E. revenue from film, amusement rides, and merchandise all drawing from and reinforcing one character/story)

Mattel is pursuing over 100 Barbie collaborations including

1. Ken and Barbie T-Shirts at the Gap

2. Barbie handbags at Nieman Marcus

3. Barbie Toothbrushes at Ulta

4. Barbie Pool floats at Target and Amazon

5. Barbie Xbox with Microsoft

AND life sized Barbie Malibu Beach House available for rent on Airbnb.. Yes that picture is an actual house for human beings that is available for rent. It came to light earlier this week when aerial Photographer, John Schreiber, posted this video to his twitter account

Bill Gates investment office would ask female job applicants if they used to be strippers, whether or not they have STDs, and other similarly off color but on brand questions. Male job applicants were not asked the same questions.

For context, Bill Gates is famous for computers but behind the scenes is also well known for extramarital affairs, being friends with Jeffrey Epstein, and sexual harassment throughout his career. Bill Gates has denied all of these allegations- smart move…

Ok so in the 70's there were a series of kinda creepy looking commercials by McDonalds referred to as McDonaldLand that featured their original mascots including Evil Grimace. He was infamous for stealing milkshakes in the commercials. Well, McDonalds decided to celebrate his 52nd birthday (June 12) by rolling out a special edition Grimace Shake. This has accidentally spurred a trend of TikTok users posting progressively darker takes on someone trying a grimace shake and subsequently being murdered. Honestly it's sort of hard to explain, but click here if you need examples.

McDonalds has cleverly gotten in on the fun posting the following:

Historic Failures: This week we have two historic failures to review

1. Monkey Business issue from last week-- apparently last week's issue was littered with grammatical and arguably a factual error or two… but maybe the real error is expecting anything better out of a newsletter called Monkey Business?

2. WhiteClaw- Unlike McDonalds, WhiteClaw had a viral moment that it did not play well.. In July of 2019 rising Comedian and online Personality Trevor Wallace posted a video titled drinks White Claw once, which played on many of the stereotypes of typical seltzer drinkers. He famously coined the phrase "Ain't No Laws when You're drinking Claws" and even started a T Shirt line that said the same.

This resulted in a cease and desist from White Claw. Truly Seltzer immediately pounced by sending a pallet full of Truly Seltzers and covering Trevor's Legal fees they also attempted to start a hashtag of their own #NoRulysWhenYoureDrinkingTrulys

TIL

There are more trees in Canada's boreal forest (estimated 300 Billion) than stars in the Milky Way (estimated 100 Billion). Though this fact was written in 2021 before the recent Canadian fires, so maybe the Milky Way is making a comeback