A shopper’s trip down the marker aisle at Target has turned into an unplanned lesson in retail math, with a video comparing two marker packs to make its point.
The clip posted on TikTok, filmed inside a Target stationery section, opens with the creator eyeing an eight-marker pack tagged at $6.99 under a prominent sale sign. “This is why you need to be careful about what you buy. You see this shiny 6.99 sale, oh my gosh, like I’m gonna buy that,” he says before stopping to take a closer look. “I almost fell for it because if you think about it, you’re saving $2.70 that’s what it’s advertising, but you only get eight.”
He then starts doing the math, as back-to-school supply runs keep shelves stocked with multipack deals across most retailers, much like one shopper recently did while comparing discounted Valentine’s Day chocolate. “So let’s do the math: you do $6.99, divide that by 8, $0.87 per marker right,” he says, calculating the per-unit cost before panning over to a second pack sitting nearby.
The math behind Target’s sale sign
That one, a 16-marker set priced at $9.99, carries no sale signage at all. “But look at this one, it’s $9.99 and you can’t even see if you’re tall like me because right here you get 16.”
Running the same calculation on the second pack produces a lower per-marker cost, and it becomes the turning point of the video. “This right here, look, you get $9.99, you divide it by how many you get 16 in this one,” he says, before running the numbers on his calculator to a result of $0.62 per marker. “You’re telling me that’s on sale? That is not on sale. This is the real sale,” he says.
He then briefly points toward a third option, a 21-count pack priced at $20, without running the math on camera, before returning to his point about the sale sign. “The sale sign is there to trick you, but it did not trick me, not this time.”
The video’s comments section has largely sided with him, though a few viewers saw it differently. One reply put the blame on the retailer generally, writing, “1st problem You’re in a Target Everything is overpriced there.”
Another commenter pointed out that buying more markers only makes sense if you actually need them, noting, “But if you dont need 16 markers..you still spent $3 more then you needed to.”
A third comment offered a different read on why the $6.99 pack was marked down in the first place, suggesting, “It’s on sale cause it’s sitting there not being sold. It should be much cheaper though.”
The math on the two packs he compares checks out. The video instead shows how easily a sale sign can make one option look like the better deal, even when a comparable product sitting nearby costs less per unit. That disconnect between a prominently advertised discount and what shoppers believe is the actual value has also fueled backlash over Michaels’ Black Friday pricing.
Unit pricing labels are already posted on shelves in many stores for exactly this kind of comparison, though in this case, the $6.99 sale tag was what caught his attention first.
Published: Aug 22, 2026 09:00 am