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Sometimes the easiest way to tell what a store sells is by looking at the shape of the store itself. Like a library shaped like a stack of books or a Burger Shack that's a giant burger, Shaped Like What It Sells is a building that is modeled and designed to look like the product(s) that's inside of it.

Should a giant entity mistake it for the real deal, This Billboard Needs Some Salt will likely ensue.

A Subtrope of Bizarchitecture.

Examples of Shaped Like What It Sells include:


Comic Books[]

Live Action Television[]

  • The Pie Hole of Pushing Daisies is shaped like a giant pie.
  • There was a joke along these lines in one episode of How I Met Your Mother. Ted was designing a building shaped like a 10-gallon hat for some cheesy Texan franchise. Instead, they went with a Mecha-Godzilla shaped building. No businessman is going to have a building design that needlessly complex if he's not going to sell souvenirs inside...unless, of course, he's been charmed by the powers of Sven.
  • Arrested Development: The Bluths' one consistent moneymaker is the frozen banana stand, which is shaped like a banana.
  • The Brady Bunch: A client, Beebee Gallini, freaks Mike out when she asks him to design her makeup factory first in the shape of a powder puff, then a lipstick, and finally a compact, complete with hinged roof.
  • Clarissa Explains It All: Marshall Darling is an architect who seems to specialize in these.
  • My Name Is Earl: Pop's Hot Dog Cart in "Stole P's HD Cart."

Western Animation[]

  • The balcony of the pizzeria from Teen Titans is shaped like a slice of pizza when seen from above. The floor is the cheese and the tables are the pepperoni.
  • In Pinocchio some of the buildings in Pleasure Island, including a smoking house shaped like a pipe and a pool hall in the form of an eight-ball.
  • Used in Cat Dog, in the case of bodily parts.
    • As well as food, such as Taco Depot.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants has a few:
    • Glove World is made of many different buildings shaped like gloves.
    • The Chum Bucket is in the shape of a giant bucket.
  • Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius has McSpankey's Burgers, shaped like a giant burger (though it also has a giant Scotsman's head on the side).

Video Games[]

  • Rollercoaster Tycoon has several:
    • A lemonade stand shaped like a lemon.
    • A burger stand shaped like a cheeseburger.
    • Almost every concession stand has an option to be shaped like the things it sells.
  • Theme Park has the Coffee Shop, Pokey Cola, Big Time Fries and the Big Time Burger shops.
  • Banjo Tooie has Big Al's Burgers and Salty Joe's Fries, a hamburger stand and french fry stand shaped like their respective products.

Web Original[]

  • The main shops of Neopets are themed like this: The food shop is a hamburger, the book shop is a book, the auction house is a mallet, the post office is a postal parcel, the pizza shop is a pizza, the school supply shop is a pencil, the music shop is a tuba of sorts, health food shop is broccoli, the defence item shop is a helmet, the gift shop is a gift box, the bakery is a peppercake house, the collectible card shop is a cardhouse, the hot dog shop is a hot dog, and the chocolate factory has chocolate topping.

Real Life[]

  • The patio walk-up to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland is shaped like a giant record player.
  • The Oscar Mayer Wiener-Mobile is shaped like a giant wiener.
  • The headquarters of the Longaberger basket company is shaped like a giant basket.
  • Tail o' the Pup in Los Angeles. This wiki breaks on URLs with apostrophes in them, so you'll just have to Google it.
  • Here's a music building.