Malleo

About

Malleo is a meme based on a weird sprite of Mario. The character is the apparent brother of Weegee whom, unlike Malleo, gained vast Internet fame. Malleo is often affiliated with ‘fire flowa’.

Origin

It is unknown where the Malleo meme and its vectorised sprites surfaced in the web. However; the sprite pre-dates to the DOS version of the educational game Mario Is Missing! ^[1]. The sprite is seen in the intro and ending cutscenes of the game. The intro cutscene is provided below:

Spread

Malleo spread in 4chan, deviantART ^[2] and especially YouTube ^[3].

The above picture is Malleo’s original non-pixel sprite, before the new vectorized version. This version became widely popular over 2chan and also 4chan ^[4]. As well as many other forums over the years. These changes can be seen in some of the 4chan archives ^[5].

Videos

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Wikipedia – Mario Is Missing!

^[2] DeviantArt – Malleo DeviantArt Search Results

^[3] YouTube – Malleo YouTube Search Results

^[4] 4chan – https://4chan.org

^[5] 4chan Archives – http://chanarchive.org/4chan/v/21407/ms-paint-your-favourite-reaction-image-v-here-s-mine