By: Lucas Ji

In 1971, a children’s book series by the name of Mr. Men and Little Misses was started. The book series revolved around these strange blobs with human-like characteristics. The books mostly had a simple plot, as it was mainly for younger children.

This whole series was created by author and illustrator Giorgio Angelini, who started this because his son once asked him: “What does a tickle feel like?” Instead of showing him right then and there, he had the inspiration to make a book that was simple yet could convey the theme.

What seemed like a normal book series later in the years viral in memes and dark humor. The highlighted sentence doesn’t quite make sense. A few months ago, people started making the name of the characters into jokes, One person notorious for making such jokes is the person behind the instagram account “LittleMissNotesApp”, which would frequently post pictures of a Mr. Man or Little Miss being renamed to something hilarious. One example of many is Little Miss Weed Psychosis, instead of the iconic Little Miss Late.

People have been making such jokes on almost every one of these characters. This is not one of the first memes that were from children’s content. Famous books that nearly everyone has read when they were kids were also frequently “remixed” in the past. The book “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie” has also been plagued with dark humor as a joke, which included recreating certain pages in the book to make them have more adult humor.

Companies such as LinkedIn, M&Ms, and PBS have also hopped on the bandwagon and made such memes whilst advertising their brand.

Memes have been around since the start of the internet and have changed throughout the years. Some believe the memes involving Mr. Men and Little Misses aren’t funny, while some enjoy the humor behind it.

Sources: https://s3.amazonaws.com/appforest_uf/f1659267252858x656912773115314600/%E2%80%98Little%20Miss%20%5BBlank%5D%E2%80%99_%20How%20a%20kid-book%20meme%20became%20viral%20comedy%20-%20The%20Washington%20Post.pdf