Walmart vs. Target Shopping Cart War

About

Walmart vs. Target Shopping Cart War or Walmart Shopping Cart Taken Hostage refers to a tongue-in-cheek war between Walmart and Target on TikTok sparked by a video of a Target employee claiming to have taken a Walmart shopping cart hostage and threatening it. The video inspired numerous Stitches and videos about the war between the two stores. Within a week, a number of brands jumped on the trend, including Walmart, Target and Pizza Hut.

Origin

On August 31st, 2021, TikToker^[1] @jadendelham posted a video (shown below) set to the Home Depot Beat sound. In the video, he says, "Hello. This is a message to Walmart from Target. We are currently holding one of your shopping carts hostage. You have 24 hours to respond, or else." He then flips the camera to show himself ram a Target cart into the rear of a Walmart cart. The video gained over 32.1 million views in a week.

On the same day, he posted a video to TikTok^[2] updating Walmart on the status of their cart, showing it trapped "behind bars" at the front of the cart queue (shown below). The video gained over 11 million views in the same span of time.

Spread

On September 1st, 2021, the Walmart TikTok^[3] page posted a Stitch to @jadendelham's video where they place a Walmart vest on the Target ball, gaining over 1.8 million views in six days (shown below, left). The Target^[4] TikTok page Stitched that video on the same day with a video showing the Target ball talking and assembling various rangers similar to Power Rangers to combat Walmart, gaining over 420,000 views in the same span of time (shown below, right).

On September 2nd, TikToker^[5] @coltonruns2003 posted a video showing himself backed by rows of Walmart shopping carts, implying they're soldiers in the war, gaining over 5.2 million views in five days (shown below).

On September 4th, TikToker^[6] @diegaddy posted a Stitch to the original video showing a number of Walmart employees jumping and beating down a Target shopping cart, garnering over 1.6 million views in three days (shown below, left). On September 6th, TikToker^[7] @micahalexander45 posted a video responding to @coltonruns2003's showing a row of Target shopping carts, gaining over 1.8 million views in a day (shown below, right).

On the same day, TikToker^[8] @huntingbenjamin posted a video captioned "Target, you have officially taken it too far," showing police cruisers outside of a Target, gaining over 969,000 views in a day (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References