Trope Workshop:Male Pack Mule



You've Seen It a Million Times -- one or more women go shopping, and they drag along a token guy to carry everything they buy. By the end of the trip, the poor schmuck resembles nothing more than an ambulatory pile of bags and boxes with a pair of human feet underneath.

Name a Sit Com which hasn't used this gag.

Fan Works
"One nice thing about a magitech society like Midchilda's was that I didn't need to hide my powers. The flipside of that, of course, was that I ended up carrying everybody's purchases in a forcefield wheeled basket..."
 * In the Mega Crossover No Tendo, Ranma Saotome is recruited by girlfriend Hotaru Tomoe and several other women when they decide to introduce gynoid KOS-MOS to shopping. Despite doing so in what amounts to a Bronze Age marketplace on a distant planet, Ranma still ends up laden with all manner of purchases.
 * In the Harry Potter fic Royal Ward, Sirius Black actually offers to play bag-carrier for his cousin Narcissa Malfoy after she sees Harrod's in London for the first time and they discuss a second visit when she has enough money on hand to buy everything she wants.
 * Invoked in the Harry Potter fic Watch by "Rorschach's Blot", when Hermione's mother Anne explains to Luna Lovegood's father that the burly men in her security detail (It Makes Sense in Context) are just there to carry the packages from her shopping trip with Luna and Hermione.
 * In the Neon Genesis Evangelion fic Once More With Feeling, Asuka is counting on using Shinji as this during a shopping trip with Rei and Misato so she can flirt with and flaunt her body at him while selecting clothes -- and is disappointed when Kaji shows up to take him away on their own shopping trip. Instead, four of their six undercover Section Two bodyguards end up playing the pack mules -- and are heavily laden when Kaji reappears with Shinji and Shinji is appointed their replacement -- although the remaining two agents are recruited to help him.
 * A downplayed example appears in chapter three of the Sailor Moon fic Isekai by Moonlight:


 * In the Harry Potter fic Angry Harry and the Seven by "Sinyk", there is a point where Harry is informed by the women of the Greengrass family (with whom he's been staying since just before his first year at Hogwarts) that he will be accompanying them on a shopping trip in the Muggle world so they have someone to carry their bags.

Newspaper Comics

 * A common gag in multiple strips over the years.

Web Original

 * Boyfriends, husbands and other men carrying armsful of bags are the subjects of dozens of photos and drawings on various stock image sites on the web.

Real Life

 * Did you think the description of an "ambulatory pile of bags" was pure hyperbole? Think again.  In 2017,  video of a husband so laden with his wife's shopping that he was a literal heap of bags with feet hit the Net, as documented in this Daily Mail article.  The page image is a frame from that video.