When GameStop outlined the policies for its “Trade Anything” Day program in mid-November, most of it made perfect, logical sense. For example, don't trade hazardous waste, chemicals or weapons.
Yes, that makes sense.
But in that list, there were some exceptions to the rule that made everyone lose their minds. Chief among them was that “taxidermy” items were identified as “valid for trade”. In other words, if you're sitting on long-dead animal stuffing and want a $5 in-store trade credit, you can totally bring it in.
Flash forward to last Saturday, after reports of what actually went down on “Trade Anything” day, taxidermy was nowhere to be found on the list of items that GameStop employees began listing and sharing online.
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Go on, it actually happened not once but twice! What's more, the official GameStop Twitter account is the one with credentials!
There were other questionable items that were tried for trade but we will not list them
On Twitter, GameStop identified not one but two examples of genuine taxidermy trades. The first of which included the bird in all its dead and stuffed glory.
A second June of some kind of mountain cat was also perfectly posed.
Again, and we cannot stress this enough, these were once living creatures and were paid to be stuffed and preserved for display purposes.
Now, it's worth noting, as many people have done in response, that GameStop's own terms state that these items, whatever they are, must fit in a 20x20x20 box. I don't pretend to be a mathematician (I was terrible at math as a kid), but there is almost zero shot that actually fit into that box that the staff had to follow.
Of course, if they'd followed through, we wouldn't have had proof that someone actually ran a taxidermy business, but employees seem to have a problem with donating cans of soup, an item that would have been fine since donating it to charity, AKA part of the whole point of the thing, then it's a bit backwards, if only to accept taxes elsewhere.
Finally, at the end of the day, GamStop had its viral moment and that person got their $5, which was enough for both parties. Whether GameStop tries to run it back with different parameters remains to be seen, but if they do, I'd venture to guess that things will be a lot tighter, even if it means turning people away.
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