About

Krusty Krab vs. Chum Bucket is a photoshop exploitable that compares two competing things using the fictional restaurants "The Krusty Krab" and "The Chum Bucket" from the animated television series SpongeBob SquarePants. In the meme, people replace the signs on each restaurant and photoshop something they like over the Krusty Krab and something they dislike over the Chum Bucket.

Origin

The restaurants used in the meme, the Krusty Krab and the Chum Bucket, are competing establishments in the television series SponeBob SquarePants. The Krusty Krab is where the character SpongeBob SquarePants works and first appeared on the first episode of the series, "Help Wanted," on May 1st, 1999.^[1] The Chum Bucket is owned by the character Plankton, who opens the restaurant in episode three, "Plankton!," which first aired on July 31st, 1999.^[2] Plankton's restaurant in this episode attempts to steal the recipe for the Krusty Krab's signature dish, the Krabby Patty.

The earliest known iteration of the restaurants used as a comparison meme was posted in February 2016 by iFunny ^[13] user SandpaperCondomsV5. In the post, a photograph of then-United States presidential candidate Donald Trump is placed next to the Krusty Krab, while a photograph of then-candidate Hillary Clinton is next to the Chum Bucket. The post (shown below) received more than 260 upvotes.

Spread

On March 9th, 2018 by Twitter ^[3] user @yungdavidbeckhm. In this tweet, the logo for the video game console PS4 is photoshopped over the Krusty Krab and a crudely drawn version of the competing video game console Xbox is photoshopped over the Chum Bucket. The post (shown below) received more than 31,000 retweets and 39,000 likes in 10 days.

Several days later, on March 12th, Twitter^[4] user @nathanjimenez_ tweeted a Buffalo Wild Wings vs. Wing Stop variation. This post about the two buffalo wings restaurants (shown below, left) received more than 17,000 retweets and 31,000 likes in six days.

The next day, on March 13th, Twitter^[5] user @genemarinas tweeted a picture of boneless buffalo wings over the Krusty Krab and regular buffalo wings over the Chum Bucket. They captioned the post "don't argue with me on this 🤣." The post (shown below, center) received more than 16,000 retweets and 33,000 likes in six days.

On March 14th, Redditor ^[6] jakeweberphoto posted a version featuring the two fictional pizzeria from the television series The Office called Alfredo's on the /r/DunderMifflin subreddit. The post (shown below, right) received more than 1,7000 points (98% upvoted) and 30 comments.

The following day, Twitter^[7] user @laszrhc tweeted an Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat variation with the caption "Well here’s one I think we could all agree on 🤔" The post (shown below) received more than 149,000 retweets and 321,000 likes in four days.

Over the next few days, several media outlets covered the popularity of the meme, including BuzzFeed, ^[8] Complex,^[9] The Daily Dot, ^[10] Mashable ^[11] and more. On March 17th, Twitter^[12] published a Momements page about the meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References