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TORONTO — Not far from a table stacked high with men’s blue jeans at one of Canada’s busiest Costco Wholesale Corp. stores is a standalone display for the InstaShiatsu, a cordless neck and back massager that bears all the hallmarks of a juicy impulse buy.

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Priced at $134.99, the InstaShiatsu gives off a quirky, as-seen-on-TV vibe that would not help its cause if it were inside Hudson’s Bay or Best Buy.

But this is Costco, so the InstaShiatsu is flying out the store even though it’s likely nobody who bought one came looking for a neck massaging apparatus.

“We put it on the floor to test it and … explosion,” said Andrée Brien, senior vice-president of national merchandising at Costco Wholesale Canada Ltd., on a recent tour of a warehouse in eastern Toronto.