This Coal Subscription Box Is a Joke. Or Is It?

Package it right and Millennials will buy anything

December 7, 2017 9:00 am

It’s about time someone made a monthly subscription service to the world’s simplest and most overlooked energy solution.

Introducing: Coal.

The fossil fuel gurus behind the new subscription service are prepared to meet your carbon needs, offering a direct-to-consumer lump of coal for $45 a month. In fact, limited-time holiday rates have dropped pricing all the way down to a crisp Andrew Jackson. What a perfect gift for the desks, mantles and naughty furnaces in your life!

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K. Let’s back up.

If there comes a day that we’re peddling lumps of coal, immediately leave the page and unsubscribe. Let us go. I think they call that “losing one’s way.”

The Coal campaign isn’t real … not exactly. It’s the invention of comedians Carina Hsieh and Nicole Boyce, who launched the site and all accompanying social media in the span of a month, expertly poking fun at the endless slew of mindless, out-of-thin-air heirlooms and monthly subscription milieu that’s got Millennials going bananas lately.

Down to the packaging, and the various product options — one lump named “The Truman” rests next to a wooden water bottle, another lump named “The Winona” sits next to a just-so-frayed copy of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories — Hsieh and Boyce are making a buzzer-beater bid for practical prank of the year. They might make a nice chunk of change along the way, too.

You know what, screw it. Put us down for “The Franklin.”

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