Also called Phil Swift Slaps On Flex Tape · Flex Tape Slap · Phil Swift Fixing a Leak
Phil Swift stops a leaking tank with a slap of tape. Label the problem, the person dealing with it, and the suspiciously simple fix.
The leak stands for a problem that is getting out of hand. The tape becomes whatever somebody tries to do about it, from restarting a laptop to ignoring an inbox.
The joke often comes from the gap between the size of the problem and the size of the remedy. This version shows the tape holding; use the captions to suggest whether the fix will actually last.
The frames come from a Flex Tape commercial featuring spokesman Phil Swift. Released online on January 12, 2017, it includes a demonstration in which he slaps tape over a hole in a water tank and stops the leak. [1] [2]
Know Your Meme documents the two-panel caption format on Imgflip in January 2019, after earlier GIFs and single-frame edits. A later altered version lets water through the hand and tape; that is a different ending from the image used here. [2]
Label Phil in the upper-left panel, the leak on the right, and the hand in the close-up below. Keep his face and enough of the water stream visible to show what is being repaired.
Choose a remedy that sounds convenient but leaves an obvious question unanswered. Marking every email as read clears the count, for example, without answering any of them.
Original captions to try with this template.
The number disappears, but the work inside the messages remains.
The fastest repair also closes everything that was being kept open.
The mess is fixed only from the guests’ point of view.
References for this template. Example captions are original.
The brand’s page hosts the original advertisement.
Documents the 2017 commercial, the January 2019 two-panel format, and the later leaking-hand edit.
