Overview

Toyotathon refers to an annual sale held by the Toyota car company which happens during December and is heavily advertised on television. Online, the event has been joked about as a real holiday conflated with the Christmas season.

Background

According to a newspaper clipping posted by the Butler Toyota dealership,^[1] the first Toyotathon was held in 1969 and lasted 36 hours. The sale later began running during December.

Toyota Distributor Uses TV to Sell Thousands of Cars Southeast Toyota Distributors, Inc. (S.E.T.) of Pompano Beach, Florida, has sold thousands of Toyotas through the use of two television campaigns that paid off handsomely. Three-thousand new vehicles were sold in a 36-hour Toyota- thon, then more than 10,000 were sold during a special campaign during the month of May TOYOTA SALES ▲ Mr. Jim Moran, President of Southeast Toyota Distributors, Inc. S.E.T. President Jim Moran, who recognized the advertising potential of television in the early 1950s when he owned the world's largest automobile dealership in Chicago, has maintained a constant flow of TV advertising since he chandising effort in the history of the Based on the success of the Toyota- founded S.E.T. in 1969, The 36-hour automobile business. "For every dollar ton, SE.T. organized a follow-up TC Toyotathon was his most successful ested," he said, "we got a S50 return campaign dubbed "Operation 15,000 effort to date. According to A in sales." The 33-market Toyotathon Promotion." More than 10,000 Toyotas Hendrickson, S.E.T.'s Merchandising and sold 3,000 new cars, generating about were sold by S.E.T. dealers during this Marketing manager, the campaign was S12.9 million in sales. The total TV campaign which covered the month of perhaps the most successful total mer budget was estimated at $250,000. ▲Sales promotion signs are well placed at Skip Verner's Toyota of Hollywood, Fla. showroom during the special May sales campaign. May

Developments

Online Parodies

In February of 2010, The Daily Show ran a segment titled "Toyotathon of Death," referencing a recent recall of some Toyota cars (shown below).

The Onion^[4] parodied Toyotathon in 2012 in an article titled "Half-Dressed Man Frantically Scrambles Out Of Home After Hearing Toyotathon Deals Won't Last Long." As a meme, people did not begin joking about Toyotathon until 2015. For example, on December 8th, 2015, @fakemikemolloy^[2] tweeted a joke referencing the Starbucks Red Holiday Cup Controversy, gaining over 76 retweets and 144 likes (shown below).

Over the following years during December, jokes about Toyotathon continued to appear. On December 8th, 2016, Twitter user @NoTheOtherJohn joked "hands out cups of water to people during Toyotathon," gaining 2 retweets and 20 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @gilbertjasono tweeted "[My long-suffering wife scowls at me as it becomes clear that I have once again failed to plan anything to celebrate Toyotathon]" on January 4th, 2017, and gained 27 retweets (shown below, right).

The jokes continued the following year. On December 19th, 2017, Slate^[3] published an article about Toyotathon as a meme, noting that Toyotathon is to the rival sale Hondadays as Christmas is to Hannukah. That year, the most popular Toyotathon tweet was posted by @Jordan_Morris, who tweeted on December 6th "I'm sick of these libs telling me I can't say "Happy Honda Days" because I might offend someone who celebrates Toyotathon. So, I guess I'm supposed to wish everyone a "Happy Winter Car Sale"?", gaining over 53,000 retweets (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Macon Butler Toyota – Toyotathon history – The roots of Toyotathon

^[2] Twitter – @fakemikemolloy

^[3] Slate – Merry Toyotathon to All!

^[4] The Onion – Half-Dressed Man Frantically Scrambles Out Of Home After Hearing Toyotathon Deals Won't Last Long

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Toyotathon

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Overview

Background

According to a newspaper clipping posted by the Butler Toyota dealership,^[1] the first Toyotathon was held in 1969 and lasted 36 hours. The sale later began running during December.