I love just plain cake donuts. Wall Drug makes the best cake donuts!

Has anyone ever seen the Infamous Wall Drug signs? It used to be that every state had a Wall Drug sign that said 2045 miles to Wall Drug, or however far. There was rumors that they have signs on the moon and in the bottom of the ocean.

Signs Around the World

During the first few years the family thought up all the corny stuff to go on the signs. As the idea caught the public funny bone, visitors to the store started contributing ideas. Today there are signs in the store promising $5 for every idea used. Other in-store signs offer to give a sign to anyone who will take it home and put it up. The walls are papered with snapshots of Wall Drug signs customers have put up from here to Hell.

Wall Drug sign in Moscow

The store gives away about 14,000 little ones and 8,000 big ones a year. "We've probably spent a million dollars for advertising," calculates Ted as offhandedly as if he were discussing last month's toothpick bill. "And we've probably gotten a million dollar's worth of free advertising in newspaper and magazine articles. One of those pages costs thousands of dollars if you buy it." Free publicity generated by the signs Dorothy calls "another break." Signs around town direct you to the store and to free parking. Signs in the store direct customer traffic, remind you to hear the cowboy orchestra, to pick up a sign, get a free drink of ice water, and about the Steam Threshing Jubilee in Madison, S.D., in late August. There's even a non-sign. While on vacation in London, Ted got the idea of a poster in the Underground (subway) trains. Soon startled London commuters learned that Wall Drug was 5,160 miles away, and if they'd write, they'd receive free literature about South Dakota, Wall Drug and the Badlands. These signs pulled twelve to twenty letters a day, and some of the Britishers actually came to see the store.

Wall Drug sign at the South Pole.

The London campaign paid off in spin-off. Several British papers wrote articles about this drug store in far-off South Dakota, somewhere in America, advertising in The Tube. A vice-president of the British Broadcasting Company phoned Ted from London and asked whether it was true that Wall Drug was advertising in the Underground. Ted said yes. The VP asked if he minded if he interviewed him by transatlantic telephone for a ten-minute rebroadcast on BBC. Ted said he wouldn't mind at all but would rather enjoy it. "I don't know how I could be so stupid. I had English signs put up in Paris." Ted's friends comforted him with the ideas that (1) practically everybody in Europe reads English anyway and (2) English signs are going to get more attention for their curiosity value and (3) those who can't read English will get someone to translate them.

Wall Drug sign in Paris