Milkwalker

About

Milkwalker is a cartoon character of a milk carton introduced by American dairy cooperative Darigold, Inc. as its company mascot in the mid-1980s. Due to its eerily disproportionate physical appearance, the character became a popular subject of creepypastas and trollpastas on Tumblr in December 2016.

Origin

Milkwalker, an anthropomorphic milk carton, was originally created by Seattle-based dairy and agricultural co-op Darigold, Inc. as the mascot of the company and a public service announcement character that encourages children to remember their full name, address and telephone number in case of emergencies. On November 28th, 2016, over three decades after its introduction, various images of the obscure mascot began circulating online after it was highlighted by the Tumblr blog Heck-Yeah-Old-Tech (shown below).^[1] The post garnered more than 49,000 notes within the first two weeks.

The post's author captioned the image:

"There are some weird advertising characters out there. This is one of them: Darigold milk during the mid-1980s was putting Milkwalker, a pint of milk with arms and legs (and rather scary ones at that) and huge soul-gobbling eyes, on its boxes with tips on how to live your life safely. Those hinge knees, man.
I’ve found no origin story, no other record of his being a thing that answers any questions about what Darigold was thinking and how long he was (to them and the schoolchildren who saw him daily) a thing."

Spread

After heck-yeah-old-tech's post, Milkwalker began generating fandom on Tumblr in the form of fan art jokes that made the milkwalker look like a sinister character.^[2] On December 10th, The Daily Dot^[3] covered the spread of Milkwalker fandom. On December 11th, heck-yeah-old-tech's original image was posted to r/WTF,^[4] where it gained over 1,700 notes.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References