About

Wanna Buy A Sundial? is an exploitable image macro depicting a character from the 1997 Disney animated movie Hercules. In the film, a side character met by Hercules is meant to imitate a street salesman offering items for purchase hidden inside the flaps of his long coat or jacket who asks Hercules if he would like to buy a sundial before being told off. Online, the character and his quote began to receive meme attention in the early 2020s with many replicating him in social media posts and making memes featuring his exposed wares.

Origin

On June 13th, 1997, the Disney movie Hercules was released, featuring the titular character trying to become a hero. During the movie, Hercules heads into a busy run-down city and is accosted by a man who quickly jumps out and opens up his cloak, flashing him a large series of sundials that he is attempting to sell, similar to a modern-day black-market watch salesman on the street.

On September 21st, 2011, the YouTube channel ADHD Adventures^[1] uploaded the clip, which gained over 88,000 views in 13 years (shown below).

The character received very little attention online until the early 2020s, with the first meme using the image of him showing the sundials being used on January 24th, 2020. On that day, Redditor u/butchYbutch_^[2] uploaded the image to the wholesome memes subreddit, with the caption being unrelated to the original intent of the character and instead conveying that the meme creator has a lot of time to spend listening to their friend's problems, earning over 25,000 upvotes in four years (shown below).

Spread

After the initial meme, the image of the sundial salesman started to be used on other sites. In early 2020, the website Imgflip received a template of him, with the earliest recorded usage of it being a meme created by user Moutchitos^[3] showing the sundial salesman having various other memes under his cloak that he is attempting to sell (shown below).

Starting in 2021, people then began to imitate the sundial salesman by showing themselves opening up a cloak or jacket in a similar fashion to him, often accompanied by text asking if the reader wants to buy a sundial or other type of object.

For example, on April 3rd, 2021, drag queen and Twitter / X user @GottMik^[4] uploaded a photo of themself posing in a similar way, revealing several wristwatches attached to the coat, earning over 33,000 likes in three years (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References