About

Dr. Phil M&M refers to a character online resembling a cross between television psychologist Dr. Phil and the Green M&M character. Since first appearing in 2008, it has been widely regarded as a "disturbing" character and saw a spike in use in 2017 after being used in videos by YouTuber Sethical.

Origin

The character comes from a print ad campaign run by M&Ms between 2007 and 2008 with the theme "There's a little M&M in all of us." The campaign edited M&Ms in the likenesses of celebrities (Dr. Phil likeness shown below). The ads were created by BBDO agency.^[1]

Online, one of the earliest known edits of the image came from a post on November 29th, 2008 to blog Post Rejects^[2] which showed the image with the caption "I know this image was created with clever digital manipulation. Still, it haunts my dreams" (shown below).

Spread

The image appeared several times in the ensuing years. On February 25th, 2015, it was posted to Imgur saying it was "the stuff of nightmares."^[3] It was posted to /r/NotTimAndEricPics^[4] on June 9th, 2016, where it gained over 150 upvotes. On July 7th, 2016, the post was uploaded to Tumblr by user zonecassette^[7] referencing You Know I Had To Do It To Em (shown below, left). One of the earliest variations of the character was upped to Reddit's me_irl subreddit^[5] on October 16th, 2016 by Redditor amedema, gaining 300 upvotes. The character in that edit was wearing a pair of Timbs (shown below, right).

After that post, the character began seeing use as a meme. A popular post circulating on Tumblr^[6] featured the character reblogged by a deactivated user named traitour on a post which read "Reblog this if you aren't homophobic," gaining over 470,000 notes (shown below, left). A dedicated Twitter parody account for the character began posting regularly around that time. On October 24th, 2016, the account posted an edit of Dr. Phil M&M with the caption "i have been t ohell and back. these scars r a reminded of my misdeeds. i will never litter again, god #hellsucks" (shown below, right).

The character saw a spike in meme usage in the summer of 2017 when it was used in several popular YouTube videos by user Sethical. On June 21st, 2017, the character featured in his video "No Clout," which gained over 1.8 million views (shown below, left). The character appeared again in a July 17th, 2017 video that gained over 1.6 million views (shown below, right). The origins of the character were asked on /r/OutOfTheLoop^[7] on July 26th, 2017.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References