Kmart Apologizes

A 5-foot-long shark died after being put in an above-ground pool at a Los Angeles home where a Kmart commercial was being filmed, a newspaper reported Thursday. The white-tipped shark died March 6 after being shipped from New York to Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times said. The shark was injected with adrenaline and received oxygen after it showed signs of stress. It was later removed from the pool and died that afternoon. - Los Angeles Times

On behalf of Kmart, its employees, management, and investors, I wish to express my sincere grief over the passing of "Finn, the five-foot shark who died this week before filming his commercial.  Finn was very excited about the prospect of being on national tv, and we believe the stress coupled with a life-long smoking habit may have contributed to his death.  We did everything medically possible to save him, injecting him with adrenaline and removing him from the water.  In retrospect, removing him from the water may not have been the wisest possible course of action, considering Finn was a shark, but we will never know.

We also are deeply saddened by the loss of Oodles, the Kmart Koala bear who died before we had a chance to film his debut television commercial.  Oodles sank into a decline after eating some spoiled eucalyptus leaves.  We here at KMart immediately injected him with steroids and applied a defibrillator but to no avail.  We tried submerging him in a tank of water, but that seemed to do more harm than good.  Oodles will be sorely missed.

Zippy, the Kmart skink, we regret to say, has also passed away.  We envisioned a series of commercials similar to that of the Geico gecko, only with a skink.  Our advertising department was working out a pun involving "skink" and "Kmart," when one of our board members "felt something funny" under his butt and discovered he'd been sitting on Zippy.  We attempted reinflating him with a bicycle pump, administering adrenaline and ibuprofen, and rolling him in a tub of butterscotch pudding, but nothing worked.

We at Kmart, however, believe life is for the living, and while we mourn the deaths of Finn, Oodles, and Zippy, we continue to forge ahead.  We have bold plans for a commercial involving two hundred "sea monkeys" (yet to be named), Ruffles - an adorable Cocker Spaniel puppy, and Mugg a visually-impaired African Elephant rescued from a local animal shelter.