What do Handsome Squidward, Keyboard Cat, and Dude with Sign all have in common? They’re all meme-famous characters cruising the web as people continue to like, comment, and share their likeness.
Think about how many memes you send your friends each week, or even daily. Memes are a vital form of communication for the modern age, connecting society through funny or relatable images and videos that friends pass back and forth on social media. The content may come from an iconic pop culture moment, a TV series, or even a tweet, usually with text added to share social commentary. The more a meme resonates with people, the more people will spread it, causing it to go viral. Many companies are finding ways to profit off this cultural currency, turning internet jokes into brands and products for fans to collect.
MAKING MEMES EVEN MORE SOCIAL
What Do You Meme? is one of the more well-known brands, with founders Elliot Tebele, Ben Kaplan, and Elie Ballas launching their first game as a Kickstarter campaign in 2016. Tebele knows a thing or two about memes: He’s the man behind the curtain of the @fuckjerry meme account on Instagram. He created the Kickstarter campaign with 10 million Instagram followers in his pocket (which has now skyrocketed to 16.6 million at time of print), and 5,753 backers pledged $229,579 to help bring the project to fruition. In the card game, players match captions to different memes, trying to come up with the funniest combination. In addition to the core game, there are now a number of special editions catered to fans of The Office, SpongeBob SquarePants, Rick and Morty, Game of Thrones, 90 Day Fiancé, Instagram comedian Rickey Thompson, and more.
“We wanted to capture the relatable humor that was being shared between friends and family online in a tabletop game format,” Tebele says. “As memes — which are, in essence, a shared cultural moment — evolved from being mostly text-based to including images, it was a no-brainer for us to include those kinds of images in our game.”
While the company’s name is still What Do You Meme?, it has evolved to include even more products based on internet culture, such as Iconic Floats. The line of pool floats features inflatables based on emojis and other web-based sensations, such as the float based on Instagram’s @dudewithsign, an account with 8 million followers that Tebele also helped launch. This year, the company will focus on growing its adult party, family-friendly, and outdoor sports games; trend-based pool floats; and plush toys.
The products are designed to bring the shareable humor of the internet offline and into the real world for a truly social experience with no screens attached. “That particular brand of humor, which is heavily influenced by pop culture and highly relatable cultural moments, remains at the core of most of our games today in the form of jokes written into the cards, game titles, or even gameplay,” Tebele says.
It may have been one of the first, but What Do You Meme? is not the only one capitalizing on mixing and matching photo and caption cards, paving the way for countless others to make similar games, such as The Awesome Game of Meme and Meme the Game from Cardinal Games, Say What You Meme from Ultra Pro Entertainment, Don’t Be Meme from Infinite Games, and Cats Doing Things Meme Game from Wilder Toys.
MEMES GET COLLECTIBLE
Internet culture is also finding its way out of the screen to get immortalized in collectible form. While many memes are instantly recognizable, some are more obscure than others. Youtooz caters to fans of both with vinyl and plush versions of memes, GIFs, gamers, YouTubers, and other content creators from the depths of the internet.
If you browse the Youtooz website, you’ll find products featuring well-known memes and GIFs like Arthur clenching his fist, the This Is Fine dog sitting calmly while everything around him is up in flames, and the Dat Boi GIF of a frog riding a unicycle, but you might find yourself scratching your head — or laughing out loud — at plenty of niche references as well. “We really want to capture the emotion of the meme,” says Youtooz Co-Founder and President Austin Long. “If it is funny, sad, scary, or something in between, we try not to overthink it and just focus on what people want to feel from it.”
The manufacturer releases limited-edition figures every week, with approximately 20-30 new products each month, many of them created from fan requests collected from Reddit and Twitter. “Much of the internet is also underserved, especially within the creator and meme communities, which has allowed us to carve our own niche,” Long says.
Youtooz makes some of its collectibles in hyper-limited quantities if the subject matter is not as mainstream. “Some memes have long life cycles and some are a blip in time,” Long says. “We try to capture what we feel is cool and special, even if it is a smaller release than normal — especially if the meme represents a specific period in time of the internet or an iconic moment that we think should be immortalized in a figure.”
FASHION-FORWARD MEMES
Some people want to take it a step further, incorporating their favorite memes into their wardrobes. In March, sock company Stance released a collection based on The Simpsons that includes a pair of socks showing Homer backing into the bushes, while apparel brand RSVLTS launched a button-down Spider-Man “The Meme” shirt featuring multiple Spider-Men pointing at each other.
“It’s always a gamble when playing with pop culture, but we had a certain sense this particular meme would translate well onto a RSVLTS shirt and be a hit because today you can still find people reposting the original meme across social in some context, recreating the poses in every corner of the web,” says RSVLTS’ Director of Communications Mike Shriner. “We figured every Spidey and Marvel fan in general would proudly pop a pose once someone pointed out the shirt on the street. And the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, too. Just ask Tom, Tobey, and Andrew: They’d agree the meme is here to stay.”
TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION
You have to have a sense of humor when creating products based on ridiculousness, like Super7’s G.I. Joe PSA collection. G.I. Joe carved its own corner of internet infamy with a surge of viral videos in the ‘00s. Each episode of the G.I. Joe animated series from the ‘80s ended with a public service announcement (PSA) teaching kids life lessons with the catchphrase, “Knowing is half the battle.” In true internet fashion, someone decided to repurpose the PSAs — only this time with bizarre twists. One clip shows Mutt, the G.I. Joe team’s dog handler, interrupting a kid petting a rabid dog by saying, “Hey, kid, I’m a computer,” while another shows Roadblock, the team’s heavy machine gunner, ushering kids away from a downed power line by asking, “Who wants a body massage?”
Super7 gave the videos new life this past April Fool’s Day with a collection of products based on them. Despite the launch date, the collection is very much real. It includes a ReAction figure for each of the parody videos, as well as a glow-in-the-dark T-shirt, a hat, enamel pins, and a skateboard deck created in collaboration with StrangeLove. The products feature quotes from the parody videos, including “body massage” and “I’m a computer!”
The Xbox Series X Replica Mini Fridge Thermoelectric Cooler is another product that stems from a joke. When Xbox first revealed the design for its Series X video game console, the internet had a collective laugh as many compared it to a refrigerator, creating Photoshopped images and comparisons that sent Twitter and Reddit into an uproar. Xbox embraced the attention, gifting Snoop Dogg and a lucky giveaway winner a 6-foot, 400-pound, 1:1-scale working fridge designed to look like the console. Xbox rode the joke for three years (and counting), recently revealing a working Xbox Mini Fridge created in partnership with Ukonic so that everyone can get it on the joke. For $99.99, fans can get a Mini Fridge of their own, featuring a glowing green interior and an illuminated Xbox logo on the front — just like the Series X console.
That’s the beauty of the internet: People around the world can share experiences that bring us all together. One meme can contain so many nuances, relaying a reaction to something ridiculous, giving us ways to communicate with like-minded individuals, and conveying the emotional state of an entire generation. Now, people can own a piece of their favorite meme moments, taking the language of the internet offline and into the third dimension.
This article was originally published in Issue No. 13 of the Pop Insider. Click here to read the full issue!
