The corporate offices of Goodwill Industries International issued a ‘code red’ to all its stores today following the announcement of a new Guitar Hero game.
The game, Guitar Hero Live, is set to launch this fall and will include a new guitar controller that renders the previous iterations of the plastic instrument obsolete. When news of a new guitar broke, Jim Gibbons, the CEO of Goodwill, sent a warning to stores across the nation. A portion of that warning read:
“The day the oracle warned us about has arrived. Soon, thousands if not millions of teenagers and twenty-somethings who think they’re doing us a big favor will begin to arrive with plastic instruments in hand to donate. Many of you will die, but as Goodwill representatives it is our duty to take this useless shit from the public and give it a good place on our shelves where it will collect dust for the next twenty years.”
I sat down with Gibbons this afternoon just minutes after he issued the warning. As he slowly stroked the barrel of his pistol with a deer-in-the-headlights look in his eyes, Gibbons detailed exactly how his stores will become inundated with plastic instruments nobody who shops at Goodwill will ever want to buy.
“The donations will come in two waves,” he said. “The first wave will be of old instruments. The second wave will be of the new instruments once retailers stop taking trade-ins. We anticipate those to start coming about five days after the game launches and everyone realizes they’re not nostalgic for a Guitar Hero game.”
When asked if Goodwill was being overly dramatic about the situation, Gibbons told a heart wrenching story about a store that was destroyed by plastic accessories.
“In Valencia, California there was a small store with just a couple of employees. I say was because this store no longer exists. It was brought to ruins when a mountain of donated DJ Hero turntables and Tony Hawk Ride skateboards caused an avalanche that killed five customers, six brave employees and nine disabled people who we get to pay less than minimum wage. Their bodies were never recovered and we must never forget.”