Hulk Hogan

During the Super Bowl, RadioShack aired an ad that kicked off the retailer's new "Do It Together" marketing campaign. Two zoned-out red shirts stand in an old outlet-mall RadioShack store. The doors bust open. Enter Hulk Hogan, Cliff from "Cheers," Mary Lou Retton, Alf, Sargeant Slaughter and others. They scour the premises for their favorite stuff and carry everything out the door, leaving the red shirts standing alone. The tagline? "The '80s called. They want their store back." Cool ad, but it missed the point. It's the RadioShack of the 2000s, and even the 2010s, that people hate.

On Sunday, RadioShack used comedy, in the form of a Super Bowl ad, to show its stores being dismantled and rebuilt. On Tuesday, the news broke that some of the stores will be dismantled, period. According to people familiar with the matter, RadioShack is planning to close around 500 locations in the coming months. It isn't clear which of RadioShack's roughly 4,300 stores will be closed and when exactly the closings will begin. The people familiar with the matter noted that it isn't unusual for companies to close stores when going through a restructuring.