What Is The 'Smug Jug' And Where Did It Come From? Memes About The Green Jug With A Face Explained

The Smug Jug has been confounding Tumblr users for months, with gifs of a green jug with a smug-looking face on it appearing seemingly out of nowhere in 2023.

The Smug Jug was eventually traced back to the Tumblr user who originally found and posted it, but not before another blogger made a series of looping gifs showing the Smug Jug smiling, running, rotating, and breaking and reassembling.

Here's where the image of the Smug Jug originated, from the time it was first posted online in 2017 to all the fan art it inspired nearly seven years later.

Where Did The Image Of Smug Jug Come From?

The image of the Smug Jug was first posted to the internet on August 25th, 2017, when Tumblr user FancyBroom shared a post that read, "Me: I'm not going to turn into a hand made clay jug tonight ! / Me after 7 tequila shots."

While it is unclear when the jug was dubbed the "Smug Jug," mentions of the phrase can be traced to a dedicated Fandom page from June 2020.

How Did The Image Of Smug Jug Become A Meme?

While the original Smug Jug image was a recognizable meme on Tumblr years after it was first posted in 2017, it did not receive a popular resurgence until Tumblr user @thetyrannosaur sent an animated gif version of the jug to Tumblr user @georgebbwbush in July 2023.

How Did The Smug Jug Meme Spread?

In December 2023, Tumblr user Moctor began posting various Smug Jug memes, all animated by themselves on Blender. The first of such posts gathered over 12,000 notes in two months.

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Things came full circle on December 14th, when Moctor respponded to a query about the genesis of the Smug Jug 3D render, to which fancybrooms responded saying that they took the original photo.

What Are Some More Smug Jug Gifs?

Neocities user vesselvindicate posted an account of the Smug Jug's evolution sometime after the aforementioned events, publishing a variety of Smug Jug gif variants, sourced from Tumblr user Moctor.

What Are Some Smug Jug Memes?

For the full history of Smug Jug, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.