Why This Company Sent Poop to 30,000 People for Black Friday

Christmas came early this year for 30,000 people who received a box of poop in the mail last week.

The sleekly designed box filled with actual excrement came courtesy of Cards Against Humanity, a fill-in-the-blank party game where players try to one up each other with phrase cards ranging from merely politically incorrect to legitimately disgusting. Costing $6 a pop, the special offer was a part of the stunt-loving company’s Black Friday sale.

“We all really hate Black Friday, it’s just kind of a horrible day,” says game co-creator Max Temkin. “It comes after this day where you’re supposed to be thankful for what you have, and then it’s just this whole huge media spectacle of people fighting each other to save $50 on a TV.”

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And so Cards Against Humanity decided to create a media spectacle of its own by pulling all of its products off its site and only selling “Bullshit” — which Temkin says sold out in less than two hours. (This isn’t the company’s first stunt — for last year’s Black Friday, the game was sold for $5 above the normal price.)
“We also had the idea of issuing people a one penny off coupon, but that felt weird because it was still a deal,” he says. “That’s sort of still doing Black Friday.”

But how did the makers of Cards Against Humanity get the poop in the box? “Well, we didn’t do anything that anyone else couldn’t have done,” Temkins says. “We went on Google and were like, ‘Can you buy bullshit? Can you sell bullshit?'”

The team found a cattle ranch in Texas that sold pasteurized bull feces for shipments and understood “what we were trying to do.”

Writing on the package boasts that while the box was made in China — “It’s the same manufacturer that does packaging for Apple!” Temkin says — the poop was made in America.

And now, says Temkins, “It’s sent, it’s out, it’s done… Initially we got a dozen people who were really surprised it was poop, but it was just actual poop.”

LAist journalists broke the poop apart to see if there was hidden inside, only to find that it was simply feces.

While the promotion is over, some people are even selling their “Bullshit” packages at a 600% markup of $36 on eBay.

Cards Against Humanity made 20 cents on each $6 box of holiday bullshit. The profits will go to Heifer International, a charity that aims to eradicate poverty and hunger by providing livestock to developing communities.

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