Private equity buyers have been linked with either a bid for the entire company or some of its constituent parts - and more recently Wal-Mart, the owner of Asda, has also been touted as a potential buyer.
What no one expected was an approach from Sainsbury's, even though the pair have been partnering in an experiment for the last year, with 10 Sainsbury's stores playing host to digital in-store Argos concessions.
Many will regard this as a defensive move on the part of Sainsbury's in the face of growing competition in the grocery sector.
However, in its stock exchange announcement confirming the approach, Sainsbury's claims the deal will also provide a platform for growth.
It argues there is a strong rationale behind a tie-up, noting that it would bring together two respected and well-known businesses, capable of offering customers fast and reliable delivery across a range of platforms.
Argos has been investing heavily recently in a same-day delivery service aimed at seeing off the competitive threat from Amazon and, coupling this with Sainsbury's store network, this could quite easily form the UK's biggest "click and collect" proposition.
Interestingly, Sainsbury's also argues that a combination of the pair could also create a financial services proposition, offering a wider range of services than those available from its existing banking business.
But make no mistake - this would also be a deal in which cost-cutting would also loom large.
The combined store estates of these businesses would overlap considerably and, as Sainsbury's notes in its statement, there would be potential for rationalisation.
Britain's commercial landlords will be watching on nervously.
Others already burned by the news include the hedge funds: Home Retail Group is one of the most popular stocks in the market for "shorting" - selling shares that you do not own in a company in the hope of making a profit by buying them back later more cheaply - and several of them, including the likes of Odey and Marshall Wace, will have been hit by the sudden rally in Home Retail Group shares sparked by this announcement.
Not least the most intriguing aspect of any marriage, should it be consummated, is that it would bring Homebase back into the Sainsbury's stable.
The UK's second-largest do-it-yourself business was once owned by Sainsbury's but was sold to the old Great Universal Stores group, which later de-merged Home Retail Group, back in 2000 for £969m.
Such have been Home Retail Group's fortunes since that the combined business, even after a 30% jump in the share price sparked by the news of Sainsbury's interest, is now only valued at £990m.
It is perfectly possible that, should it succeed in buying Home Retail Group, Sainsbury's might well choose to offload Homebase to a private equity buyer.
Investors have never really been sold on the synergy benefits, in the jargon, of keeping it and Argos under one roof.
The real prize for Sainsbury's here will be the vast high street store estate Argos has - many of which could be converted into its convenience formats.
At the same time, it is easy to see how the larger out-of-town stores owned by Sainsbury's could be used to fuel Argos's click-and-collect proposition while benefiting from the increased numbers of customers visiting its stores that would create.
This approach also sends out another intriguing signal, namely the growing self-belief of Sainsbury's under its chief executive, Mike Coupe.
The retailer has, for some time, been outperforming the other members of the big four - Tesco, Asda and Morrisons - and this approach suggests Mr Coupe is confident of both continuing that and that his management team is capable of executing a big combination like this.
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