Pentagon Prices

The now-legendary tendency of the American military -- usually personified as The Pentagon -- to pay outrageously inflated prices for things that would be inexpensive for the average consumer, on the grounds that they were being provided by "the lowest bidder" and thus no cheaper price was available. As Christopher Cerf and Henry Beard put it in the subtitle for their book The Pentagon Catalog, they are "ordinary products at extraordinary prices".

This is, unfortunately, Truth in Television, and was first brought to wide notice during the Defense Department procurement scandals of the 1980s. Several news organizations revealed that the Pentagon routinely spent bought screws for US$37 each, hammers for $400, toilet seats for $640, coffeemakers for over $7500 and aluminum ladders for nearly $75,000(!), among other over-the-top prices. (And it didn't go away just because the public learned about it -- as recently as July 2018, senators were demanding to know why the Pentagon spent $10,000 on a toilet seat cover that could be 3D-printed for $300.) For extra comic value, the price increase was often supported by a corresponding increase in the complexity of the item description -- it wasn't a "hammer" you were buying for your $400, but a "manually-operated impact-driven friction-fastener application system".

Later investigations revealed that at least some of the excessive prices were most likely illusory, caused by poor accounting practices averaging other costs into and over the items purchased; and some were the result of actual custom manufacture to MIL-SPEC requirements. But there have been (far, far too many) genuine cases of fraud and mismanagement resulting in inexpensive supplies being sold to the military for exorbitant rates.

Naturally, this lends itself well to political satire.

Advertising

 * Just before the first IKEA stores opened in the U.S., IKEA staged a teaser advertising blitz on roadside billboards. One billboard sported the tagline "More economical than this" above a picture of a wrench on which were stamped the words, "PROPERTY OF THE PENTAGON".

Literature

 * Explored thoroughly in the 1986 book The Pentagon Catalog (Google Books copy here) by Christopher Cerf and Henry Beard.

Music
"Sold a hammer to the Pentagon To the Bing Bang to the Pentagon And I'm living in Florida for they made me a millionaire They gave me 700 for every silly little hammer For I sold them to the Pentagon and they made me a millionaire So you sell them nails To the Bing Bang to the Pentagon Yes you sell them nails and they'll make you a millionaire"
 * Tom Paxton's 1986 song "Sold a Hammer To The Pentagon", from his album One Million Lawyers and Other Disasters, explains how you can take take advantage of the Pentagon's buying patterns to enrich yourself:

Real Life

 * This is a trope born from real life. Here are a couple news stories from the mid-1980s when this first came to the attention of the general public:
 * The LA Times
 * the Washington Post.
 * See also the July 2018 story linked in the main text.