Today, we spend $1 million. – Let’s talk about that. (cheerful music) Good mythical morning. – $1 million. Some of us have won it. Some of us have earned it. Some of us just enjoy Lil Wayne rapping about it. But no matter what your degree of separation you are from the almighty milli, we’ve all dreamed about what it’d be like to be a millionaire. – But there’s one special place out there that has a way of making you feel kind of like a millionaire even if it’s just by helping you keep more money in your pocket, and I’m talking about the dollar store. – Yeah, so what happens when we actually try to spend a million dollars at the dollar store? Buckle up, ’cause we’re about to drop the big bucks and a brand new game. It’s time for the Barenaked Ladies sure knew how to spend a milli, but our dollar store haul makes their choices look silly. – Okay, the name of the game is simple and it’s why you clicked on this video. We’ve got $1 million, and we’re gonna spend it at a dollar store. But before you go on thinking that you’re just gonna watch us go to some dollar store and spend a million dollars at that dollar store and then ta-da, end of video. That’s not how this is gonna go down. We ain’t Mr. Beast. We’ve gotta Rhett and Link-ize this thing, okay? So it’s gonna be a competition between the two of us. – Right, so at the beginning of the game, we’ll each start out with $500,000 for our shopping spree, and just like how I view spending money on my rewards card, all we truly care about here are the points. So luckily the point system is super easy to understand. Real life purchases in the game earn you mythic points. $1 spent equals one mythic point. Easy as pie. – One to one, and the first person to get 500,000 mythic points wins and will be crowned dollar store Brian. – Right. – But before we go any deeper into the mythic point system, because there’s some pretty cool things about that that we’re gonna wanna tell you about. I’m sure you’re wondering which dollar store are we gonna be spending a million dollars at? – That’s a great question. – Great question. – Okay, do you know that there are more than 34,000 dollar stores in America? That’s more than all Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s businesses in the US combined! But when it comes to the – Sounds crazy but it’s true. – Amazing players in the dollar store industry, four names stand at top of the mountain. Dollar General. – [Link] Dollar Tree. – [Rhett] Family Dollar, which is also owned by Dollar Tree. – [Link] What?! – [Rhett] And the 99 cents only store. – [Link] Okay. There’s a lot of internal debate here, and external between us and the team, but after careful consideration, we have decided not to go to Dollar General. We’ve also decided not to go to Family Dollar. We’ve also decided not to go to the 99 cents only store, because honestly we just don’t think that any of these count as true dollar stores. But to help explain our reasoning, ask yourself, what is the definition of a true dollar store? – I mean, is it a store where some of the items are sold for a dollar? – If that’s true, then pretty much every store and gas station is a dollar store. – And that’s not true. So is it a store where the majority of all items are sold for a dollar? – Well, I mean, would you then consider your local garage sale some kind of popup, free range dollar store? – No, you wouldn’t. – No. – Or is a true dollar store simply a store where every single item is sold for the low, low price of $1? (Link vocalizes bell) – I think we have a winner. – So, by that sound reasoning, Dollar General, Family Dollar and the 99 cents only stores don’t count as a true dollar store because they all sell a bunch of items way above that dollar price point. We’re talking upwards of nine or $10, that’s crazy, okay?! It’s unacceptable. – He’s angry. – I am angry. – I’m also angry. I’m more of a seething anger, and you’re more of a spouting anger. – Right. – So we have decided to spend our million dollars at Dollar Tree, not a sponsor, because in our hearts, a dollar store should only cost a dollar, and if you’ve ever been to a Dollar Tree in the past, you’ll remember their iconic green signs that probably say, “Everything’s $1.” – [Rhett] Yeah, there it is. They ain’t lying about that. – When I read the sign, I read it in the voice. Everything’s $1. – And listen, they’ve kept to that special promise for 35 glorious years in the business. Never once wavering on their commitment to the cash-conscious customer. Now, as of August 2021, Dollar Tree remains the last holdout, the only major retailer that continues to price it’s entire inventory for $1. Everything’s $1. – Well, at least that was the case until September, 2021. – Because at that point, everything stopped being $1. – Right. – Yeah, we started doing some digging. Back in September of 2021, Dollar Tree announced that they were unfortunately going to permanently raise their prices by 25% on the majority of their products. – Okay, but look, listen, you know how angry we were a second ago. – We were so angry. – We’re gonna give Dollar Tree a pass because when you think about it, inflation, anybody? I mean, prices for everything are going up, gas, sneakers, celebrity-backed tequilas, and if you’re not able to be flexible with big daddy corporate America, then what’s even the point, right? – What’s even the point? So while we were originally going to count $1 item purchases for mythic points, now we’re saying that we can purchase items for $1, or in addition, also we can purchase things for $1.25. If something costs more than $1.25, we will not buy it. But what is it even doing at the dollar store? That is unless of course we have a little something called, a coupon. – Yes, and here’s how our coupon structure for the game works. Now, while most normal stores use coupons to lower the prices of their existing products, Dollar Tree uses their weekly ads to highlight what cool new stuff they’re now selling for the low low price of $1. – Genius. – And 25 cents. And I mean, these ads do not disappoint. Show them, Twinky. – [Link] Woo, look at that. – [Rhett] I wanna get lost in that coupon. – [Link] It’s like a looking fine. – [Rhett] Look at those flirty little frogs. – [Link] Oh yeah. – [Rhett] Is it a coincidence that they’re on page six of nine in that coupon book? I think not. – With a mouth like that. (both chuckle) I’m looking at you in the middle. But even though there aren’t discount coupons in the traditional sense at Dollar Tree, this is where we open things up to have fun with the other dollar stores and their coupons. We’re talking about the competition. While shopping, if we find a product at Dollar Tree that matches up with a coupon at Dollar General, Dollar Family or the 99 cents only stores app- – Or Family Dollar. – Okay, sure. Then we can reduce that Dollar Tree price in store as if that coupon was globally accepted. I think Home Depot does that? – Yeah, yeah. And if you’re wondering, I know you are, won’t coupons somehow negatively affect our earning potential for mythic points? Good catch, thanks for listening. Yes, while technically the rule stating that $1 equals one mythic point would actually mean that spending less money than $1 for a product would earn you less than one mythic point, that doesn’t factor in coupon multipliers, so we’re still good! – We’re still good. Any purchase made using an accepted coupon is automatically subject to the coupon multiplier which boosts up your product’s theoretical price to an even $2, no matter what. That way every coupon bought product. I’m talking about a coupon bought product gives you two mythic points. I feel like I’m selling them on something. – Yeah, very slowly. – They’ve already clicked. They are on board for it. But, I mean, you gotta understand, technically while you’re only paying the discounted coupon price, okay? It’s like you’re paying more, and therefore raking in more mythic points. So you gotta use your coupons when you got them. – Right, and just to be clear, the coupon multiplier works on a sliding scale, so whatever your coupon discount price is multiplied by whatever it takes to get you to $2, AKA two mythic points. So here’s an example, just so you can wrap your mind around this. Let’s say you find a coupon for a bottle of distilled water that knocks down on the price to 40 cents, okay? Well, the coupon multiplier will multiply your price by five to reach that $2 price point. Or let’s say you buy a box of crayons with a coupon that lowers the price to only 11 cents, well the coupon multiplier will multiply that 11 cents by 18, earning you those two mythic points. – But now I bet you’re asking, “What if you find a coupon like this one from Dollar General, where if you buy five of one item, then you can get a sixth one for only 1 cent.” – [Rhett] Well, we actually thought a lot about that, and we decided we’re not going to count those kinds of coupons, so it’s too complicated. But do you know what’s not complicated, Link? We just dropped a brand new tee in the store, and I’m wearing it right now! Get this super cool, very official GMM T-shirt now at mythical.com. – But now that we’ve covered the general basis for how coupons work in the game, and also talked about that awesome shirt, we gotta talk real quick about the souper points. – Oh, man. Oh, yeah. – You forgot. – Oh, gosh. – That’s souper spelled S O U P E R. – Like soup. – Like the meal, in a bowl. The liquid meal in a bowl. Soup. There are special points that you only get by making purchases of soup or any soup-related products. – Now, you’re probably thinking, “What counts as soup-related?” That’s cause that’s what I was thinking. Well, we had the mythical kitcheneers, and Davin create a pretty extensive Venn diagram to help us explain, okay? I got it right here. So you see, you’ve got definitely soup minestrone, that kind of thing. Definitely not soup, Uranium as an example, but then soup-related, thermos, you understand that? You could put uranium in a thermos, but you could also put soup in it. It’s sort of soup-adjacent, right? – I mean, you could put a wiffle balls in soup, couldn’t you? Nope, nope. – You could, but it doesn’t make them soup- adjacent. Grandma smells like soup and makes soup, so she is soup-adjacent, okay? Does that make sense? – Basically, anytime you make a qualifying souper points purchase, you get seven souper points. Unless you buy something that is 100% soup, like tomato soup or cream of mushroom soup, and in that case you get 13 souper points. – Yeah, and souper points are highly coveted in the gameplay. Not only because every 35 souper points can be converted to 28 mythic points, but also because once earned, they cannot be destroyed or stolen from a player. – Right, they’re permanent. They’re like a tattoo. When we talked about getting tattoo points, but that was also too complicated. So, that’s right, in this game, unlike souper points, mythic points can get destroyed with a little something that we like to call aisle blasters. With an aisle blaster, you can get to choose any one aisle from Dollar Tree to figuratively blast away, destroying all the mythic point that, in my case, you have, – Your opponent. – That you’ve gained on that aisle. Even souper points. – Right, which is crazy. – I know, we they were permanent. – We just said that they were permanent. – But except- – Except with the blast. – The aisle blast. – Now, if you have an aisle blasted and you lose your mythic points, don’t worry, it’s not totally over, cash money chase will automatically give you a defeat receipt, just like this one. Now you see that little QR code at the bottom? – Not that little. – If we scan it with our phone, then we’ll get to a fun trivia questionnaire. If we can answer every question, or all five questions, within 20 Mississippis, then we get to keep 20% of our aisle blasted mythic points in honor of the fact that Mississippi was the 20th state to join the union back in 1870. – But while aisle blasters and their destructive power are incredibly important, they are nothing, I repeat, nothing compared to secret Larries. – Oh, this is my favorite part. It is no secret how valuable secret Larries are to win in this game. But to understand secret Larries, you first have to have a basic understanding of how barcodes work. You know, the lines on stuff. – According to barcodelabels.com, not a sponsor. – Not that we didn’t try. – Barcodes are basically a license plate that is linked to data files. These strings of characters can designate all types of information encrypted in barcode languages, called symbologies, for fast transfer through a scanner to a computer. – And there are different kinds of barcode symbologies, some of which you may already be familiar with. Code 39? – Yep. – Code 128. Interleave 205. QR codes. International article number. – Yellow number five. – And more. – But the one barcode symbology that really matters in the game is UPC, AKA the universal products codes, and you can find these on nearly every retail product, and that’s because these barcodes were initially generated for grocery stores. – And according to Dollar Tree’s UPC basic standards PDF from 2015 that we found online, after some digging. They have a strict set of rules for how to display their UPC codes within their stores, and it turns out that there are in fact inaccurate UPC locations. Look at that. Inaccurate. – [Link] Don’t wrap a corner. Avoid package flaps. – And those, my friends are those sweet sweet secret Larries. – While we’re shopping, if we find a UPC barcode inaccurately placed on a product, that counts as one secret Larry. And I imagine maybe you’re thinking, “Well, what if there’s a product that’s too small to have a normal sized UPC? Is that a secret Larry?” No, but it is a semi-secret Larry, and it’s worth something too. If a UPC is 80% sized or smaller, that counts as a semi-secret Larry, which is four fifths of a regular secret Larry. – And I’m sure a handful of you are wondering, “But what even is the point of having secret Larries?” Well allow me to answer that question with another question. Why destroy your opponents points when you can steal them? Even their souper points. When you find and collect 13 secret Larries at the store, you can convert them into a suction Larry. (Link imitates suction) Suction Larries literally suck points away from the other guy, but unlike an aisle blaster, you can’t just choose which points for suction Larry to suck. It’s a randomized process using a bingo ball cage that the art department created just for this occasion. Here it is. – Okay, and as you can see, if you wanna get that thing rolling, the numbers on the balls directly correspond to different aisles at Dollar Tree. So whatever number you pick from the cage, suction Larry will suck away all the points your opponent gained from that aisle and give them to you instead. – Aisle 30. – Well, that would just be aisle three, or aisle two. I mean, unless it’s a super Family Dollar, or a super Dollar Tree. – Okay, I might have to suck one of those back up in here. Now, suction Larry being used against you is almost impossible to block, but it’s still theoretically possible. If you’re willing to sacrifice 1,800 and what was it? – 17. – Okay. 17 mythic points at the altar of savings. Oh yeah, because the 1817, that represents the year Mississippi became the 20th state to join the union. – One of my favorite years. – If you do that before a suction Larry is used against you, you’ll earn a, “No, thanks, Nigel.” No, thanks, Nigel? – You forgot about the, no, thanks, Nigel? They’re so cool! – How did that work again? – Well, with the, no, thanks, Nigel, you’ve got the ability to potentially block a suction Larry. But just like a suction Larry, it’s all randomized using this bingo cage. – It uses the cage again. – It uses the cage again. – I know we talked about this a lot, and I know we’ve been priding ourselves on how simple the rules are, but now that I’ve actually heard them all in, you know, one spiel, I’m beginning to get the impression that it’s not that simple. – But we haven’t talked about the physical challenges or the sales tax challenge. – The sales tax showdown. – Right. – God. Well, you know, I mean, it’s not that it’s not just kind of complicated, but it’s also- – Could it be that you just don’t understand it? Just be honest, if you’re confused. – Well, I got confused there, yeah. I forgot about no thanks, Nigel, but also I’m thinking about the budget, you know? – I’m confused. – We’re spending a million dollars on this game? – Well, that’s a good point. – This is the most expensive episode we’ve ever done. – I mean, plus the cost of money. (staff laughs) – I don’t wanna be the one to say this, but I feel like. – [Woman] Well, I mean, I’m gonna go on record and I, from the start, I was saying that this wasn’t a good idea. You know I was saying that. – Why didn’t you say something when we were brainstorming it? – [Woman] I did, I totally did! – The whole first part of the episode. – What did you say specifically? – [Woman] Well, I said it like a million times. I said, “No, no, no suction Larry.” At the suction Larry point, that’s when I thought it was gonna become clear for you. – I’ve been really excited about this because we’ve been trying for years to do one of those Mr. Beast things, that’s on the front page of YouTube, it gets 30 million views in a couple hours. – It’ll never work. All right. All right, we won’t do it. We won’t do it. – But who gets to be the Dollar Store Brian? Because that was the thing that I was most excited about. – We could rock paper scissors for it. – Okay. I guess that’s fair. – [Both] Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. Rock paper, scissors, shoot. – Okay, listen. Maybe nobody gets to be Dollar Store Brian, okay? We can just go with that. I mean, maybe nobody gets to be it, you know? – Thanks for subscribing and clicking that bell. – You know what time it is. ♪ Rhett and Link ♪ ♪ Rhett and Link ♪ ♪ I want to know what you think about my song. ♪ ♪ Put me on GMM this week. ♪ ♪ I’m from Parkers Burke, West Virginia ♪ ♪ And my name is Anthony. ♪ ♪ Hey, it’s time for us to spin that wheel of mythicality ♪ (staff laughing) – We love it. We love it, Anthony. – It’s like it was all happening in his mind. – I love it! It just happened in my mind. Click the top link to watch us match the crew member to their heinous crime in Good Mythical More. – And to find out where the wheel of mythicality is gonna land. – [Rhett] A very normal, incredibly official mythical tee is available for you to buy for a limited time at mythical.com.