TRENT BARTLETT
In a last-ditch attempt to bury what could be Adelaide’s most intriguing furniture commercial-adjacent mystery, furniture store and Adelaide’s foremost purveyors of television parody, Haggle Co have announced that they will be closing down instead of answering questions about the disappearance of the original Haggle guy.
Employees at Haggle Co’s Parafield store say they remember their last interaction with the city’s then-King of the Deal being rushed and more weird than normal, telling Haggle Co historians that he went out to buy a bald cap and an iron mask for a then-upcoming Haggle-themed parody of Mad Max: Fury Road and never returned.
Jerevy Langitude from the Haggle Co History and True Crime podcast ‘Haggling For Answers’ told Adelaide Mail that the final TV commercial featuring the original Haggle Guy carries hidden messages alongside some dining chairs that feel like they’re about $150 too expensive for how they look.
“If you play his rendition of the “You’ve Got To Haggle, Haggle” jingle backwards, it sort of sounds like he’s saying “oh god, oh god, help me, I’ve been abducted by heavies from the Adelaide furniture sales underworld.” We did intend to fact-check this before going to print but couldn’t work out how to play a video backwards on YouTube. It’s probably true.
New Haggle Guy emerged around six years ago, setting off on a panicked frenzy of chromakeyed Hollywood parody furniture ads, we’re assuming to distract us from Old Haggle Guy’s disappearance.
The more recent ads have become well known for New Haggle Guy’s interminable screaming, which psychologists suggest could be indicative of years of repressed guilt and secrets or possibly some incredible discounts on sofas this weekend.
Adelaide Mail would like to note that the official line from Haggle Co to explain the business’s closure was that they had simply run out of Movies to parody in their commercials. The furniture store pointing its finger at Hollywood’s increasing reliance on the same few pieces of IP directly impacting the ability of local businesses to shift 9-piece leather sofas.
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