About

Wheels on a Shopping Cart refer to a four-panel image series which reference the notion that one of the four wheels on shopping carts is often broken and spins around its axis when the cart is pushed. Memes about shopping carts gained spread on Reddit in late August 2019.

Origin

On August 25th, 2019, Redditor madapplepi posted a meme humorously representing the behavior of four wheels on a shopping cart via images of Crash Bandicoot. The post gained over 42,800 upvotes in nine days (shown below).^[1]

Spread

In the following weeks, multiple similarly executed memes in which three functioning wheels and one malfunctioning wheel of the cart were represented via images of various characters gained popularity on Reddit, primarily in /r/dankmemes and /r/memes subreddits. For example, an August 30th post by Redditor garvitmastaadmi based on the Three-Headed Dragon meme gained over 46,700 upvotes in five days (shown below left).^[2] A post based on the photographs of Smudge the Cat by Redditor PerryThePlatypus5 gained over 9,600 upvotes in four days (shown below, right).^[3]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References