Have you ever seen a fake store on a TV show or at the movies and thought, “Wow, I would so much rather have that in my town than 16 Starbucks and the abandoned Blockbusters Video that now just smells of hobo pee”? Well, whether you’re looking for a nice place to eat or a weird place to pick up magical constipation powder, here is a list of fictional stores that would do any real shopping center proud.
Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes
Anyone who has visited The Wizarding World of Harry Potter knows the shops there merely sell amusingly packaged candy, official merchandise, and butterbeer minus the alcohol content that would require several bouncers to deal with blitzed eight-year-olds. But a real Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes shop would let consumers buy extendable ears , decoy detonators, skiving snackboxes, and hundreds of other remarkable novelty items that could hilarious land someone in the hospital or prison. It would also let you contribute to the Weasley Survival Fund, a charity that should be set up to raise money for a family that has been repeatedly killed and cursed ever since they had the horrible misfortune of making friends with that Potter boy.
Leftorium
Yes, there are countless stores in Springfield one might wish to be real. But the owner of The Android Dungeon is even more socially inept than real comic book store managers, the Kwik-E-Mart is regularly visited by armed robbers and salmonella outbreaks, and Krusty Burger was once fined for serving cat burgers. That leaves Ned Flanders’ Leftorium, a very niche mall store of left-handed products that continues to struggle despite the fact when it first opened it revealed 98% of Springfield citizens are lefties. But for anyone who ever had to play a bass guitar upside down like Paul McCartney or whose only athletic skill is confounding usually sleeping right fielders when at bat, this place would be a dream come true.
Acme Products
True, a real Acme Products Company would constantly be on the brink of bankruptcy due to millions of class-action lawsuits, all of which would involve the charge “…and that’s when my sternum blew out.” But simply having access to such a catalog would let consumers dream—if only for a moment—that they really could make their own tornado or fire instant straightjackets from a bazooka…only to immediately be undone by the laws of physics and a very crafty, high-speed desert bird.
Big Kahuna Burger
Despite the above photo, Big Kahuna Burger (as mentioned in “Pulp Fiction” and other Tarantino movies) does not really exist. Which is a shame because a Hawaiian-themed fast food joint would no doubt be a salvation for all the 4 am drunks forced to go to White Castle or Waffle House instead, only to wake up late afternoon and be visited by regret and a Medivac unit. Plus, it would be interesting to see just how many ways you could put pineapple, coconut, and poi on a burger before consumers just couldn’t take it anymore and wound up sucking dry the ketchup packets instead.
Planet Express
There already are many delivery companies, most of which do not employ poverty-stricken lobsters or drivers minus depth perception. But the existence of a Planet Express would mean both that space travel had become commonplace and we were in regular contact with alien civilizations. And not only would these extraterrestrial beings need some means of getting their Amazon.com orders but it would also give us a chance to order products from their home planets, so long as they weren’t just nefarious means of sending us viral outbreaks or a very gradual invasion force by way of Fruit-of-the-Month clubs.
Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory
True, there does exist Wonka Candy, but these items are about as mysterious and magical as finally finding the lone Krackle bar in a bag of Hershey’s Miniatures. That’s why we need an actual Wonka Factory that completely violates every known factory safety law with Dr. Seuss meets “Saw”-like candy machines and a clearly non-unionized midget workforce while pumping out confection even third world nations’ FDAs wouldn’t legalize thanks to a chocolate river that also serves as the factory’s main shipping lane, thereby turning every shop visit into a roulette wheel for your chances of survival.
What store do you wan to really exst? Let us know in the comments!
Comments
Post a Comment