Man's video creates run on Patti LaBelle pies

Every holiday there seems to be that one "must have" item.  Usually it's some toy the kids want.  But this year it just might be Patti LaBelle's sweet potato pie.

34-year-old James Wright grew up listening to Patti LaBelle sing.

"My mom was a Patti LaBelle, well, she still is a Patti LaBelle fan and so I was kind of forced to be a Patti LaBelle fan," Wright says.

He also enjoys sweet potato pie. So last week when he learned that the godmother of soul had partnered with Walmart to sell her verion of the pie, he bought five of them for $3.48 apiece and recorded himself eating one without utensils using his camera phone.

He posted it to YouTube and less than a week later he had millions of views.

Walmart started selling an average of a pie a second for 72 hours straight, leading many of its stores to sell out.

"The video was passed around in the Walmart store amongst the workers so I went into a Walmart after to get some soap and everybody's like 'it's the Patti pie man'," Wright says.

It took less than a day for LaBell herself to locate and call Wright.

Walmart says it's emptied its distribution centers of every pie and does not expect to have them fully back in stock until December.