A man put a comically large cardboard cutout of himself in a convenience store, documented the experience for TikTok, and wound up with a full-blown partnership with the Kum & Go chain. The project is by Kyle Scheele, a "professional internet goofball" who enjoys "making things that live at the intersection of humor and heart." His centaur bike made it to BoingBoing a few months ago.
The video got traction on TikTok almost immediately, and it currently has over 28 million views (a lot, even by TikTok standards). Scheele then revealed a bona fide "Kyle Scheele meal" at Kum&Go consisting of a "pizza sandwich" and 12-oz Red Bull. His TikTok followers flocked to the midwestern chain.
The story lost a bit of its charm when reports came out that Kum & Go's marketing team had paid Scheele to orchestrate the stunt. Following reports in AdWeek and PRWeek, Scheele apologized for not revealing that Kum&Go had been in on the prank from the beginning.
The prank might be fake, but that doesn't mean it can't be funny. Regardless of Scheele's motivation, I can't help but chuckle at the video of him walking past unsuspecting convenience store workers with a massive cutout of himself playing a pizza-shaped guitar.
