Everyone knows those Dirt Cheap ads with that dumb Chicken jumping around. What you didn’t know is that Dirt Cheap has spent upwards of $9.2 Million dollars in advertising between 1993 – 2009!

That little detail was a nugget of WTF information embedded in the court documents about the trademark lawsuit between Dirt Cheap and competitor Cheap Cheap.

Dirt Cheap, a chain of 12 St. Louis-area discount liquor and cigarette stores, filed a suit this week in federal court in St. Louis against the owners of stores called “Cheap Cheap,” alleging trademark infringement.

“Dirt Cheap’s success attracts opportunists seeking to pirate its famous trademarks for their start-up retail establishments,” according to the suit. “Defendants are unabashedly infringing and diluting Dirt Cheap’s famous trademarks.”

$9.2 Million! Jesus. For that amount of money, you could buy Adam Wainwright’s current contract with the Cardinals 6 times or get us to blow you 184 Million times.

How much do chicken suits cost?

via St. Louis Business Journal

Editor’s Note: As noted and verified, the actual number is “nine point two” million, not “ninety-two” million. Big difference! The post has been updated above (in red) with our apologies. We’re not sure if we copied the original article wrong, or they had it wrong initially as well. Point being, our numbers are off for the things you could buy with that money. You could not purchase Wainwright’s contract 6 times over. The part about us blowing you 184 Million times is still correct however as our prices have dropped since the original time of this writing.

Fred has moved on, and if you want to know the details of his split from the Dirt Cheap conglomerate, check out the article that has so much detail you will forget why you cared about this and leave half way through on STLToday.

What we at Punching Kitty want to know is:

Which commercial do you prefer?

The classic Dirt Cheap:

or the new Fred’s Cheapo Depot:

I know the Cheapo Depot is just starting out, but there’s something about the delivery that makes me think he is excited enough about the change to be able to really make some super horribly fantastic commercials in the near future.