The Internet has turned adorable children’s cartoons into the perfect meme to share insecurities and toxic traits.
Remember Little Miss and Mr. Men?
These little characters have gone viral after social media users began parodying the classic “Little Miss Sunshine” with relatable and iconic takes like Little Miss Trauma Dump and Little Miss Can I Hit Your Vape?
The origins of Little Miss and Mr. Men
The Mr. Men characters were created in 1971 when children’s author Roger Hargreaves wrote “Mr. Tickle,” a book with a smiling yellow creature with wiggly arms on the cover.
The series quickly took off, leading to the creation of “Little Miss Bossy,” “Little Miss Naughty” and “Little Miss Sunshine” by 1981, according to the book series’ website.
English author Roger Hargreaves (1935 – 1988) dances with Mr. Happy (left) and Little Miss Scatterbrain at the Inn on the Park Hotel, Park Lane, London, at the launch of the ‘Little Miss’ series of books, 8th April 1981.
Monti Spry/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The characters even extended to “Little Miss Princess” in 2011 ahead of the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and the Spice Girls even received their own Little Misses in 2019.
The most recent edition in the series is titled “Mr. Bolt,” and is inspired by Olympic gold medalist and world-record holding sprinter Usain Bolt.
How the meme started
Now Gen Z has leveraged the characters to create the newest meme to share anything from mental and physical health struggles to questionable red flags, like Mr. Receding Hairline and Little Miss Passive Aggressive.
The meme originated on Instagram earlier this year from user @juulpuppy, the self-described “uncredited creator” of the meme. In a post Monday, the user said their “initial 30 little miss/mr. memes went viral and birthed subsequent meme pages on tiktok and instagram and thousands of followers for other creators using this template!”
“of course memes and internet culture generally aren’t rlly about credit but i think some of u guys could probably sympathize that i create original content almost every single day and have reaped very few of the benefits from this trend i jump started… i’m glad ppl are having fun and that’s all memes are rlly about at the end of the day; i just wanted to point this out,” the user wrote.
Since then, the meme has spread to other accounts that post the characters, like @littlemissnotesapp, which has more than 1.2 million followers, and @starbucksslayqueen, which has nearly 100,000 followers.
The meme has since spread from Instagram to other social media platforms, leading TikTokers to post videos describing themselves as characters, and Twitter users to post their own versions.
Even sports teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and the Chicago Bears have posted their own versions, and phone case company CASETiFY has launched a special Mr. Men Little Miss collection.
So get ready for these adorable little characters to be all over your Instagram stories for the next few days (if it hasn’t taken over already).
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
