Argos puts a Smeg fridge in a giant toy box to settle the toy-shop debate

Argos is leaning into the joke it has heard for years.

The retailer’s new out-of-home campaign, ‘More than toys’, packages premium home products as oversized toys to confront the long-standing idea that Argos is mainly a toy shop.

Created by agency T&P, the special build executions transform a Habitat sofa and an iconic Smeg fridge into giant boxed “toys”, each stamped with an “Ages: 25+” rating and deadpan warnings such as “Snoozing Hazard” for the sofa and “Milk Not Included” for the fridge.

The installations sit in high-traffic London locations at Exmouth Market and Camberwell, engineered to stop passers-by and spark a second look.

By borrowing the visual language of toy packaging and supersizing it, the work makes the breadth of the Argos range impossible to ignore, echoing the scale-led approach of Habitat’s oversized anniversary billboards and Russell Hobbs’ giant kettle build.