THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jun/04/bizarre-return-of-mr-blobby
He’s pink, dotty and as British as a Boots meal deal. In recent months he’s duetted with pop stars, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been declared the UK’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse. What’s behind this strange comeback?
@cstross I was in Germany between 1991 and 1995 and was very confused when I came back to the UK, saw this strange blobby *thing* and had absolutely no idea what it was or why people seemed to like the idiotic thing.
Now it's thirty years later and I still don't understand.
@edchivers @cstross It's deliberately cringe in order to make fun of the celebs who got duped into earnestly trying to join in. Like Brass Eye, but without the pretence at a serious message underneath, to highlight how wilfully blind to red flags some people can be to be in the spotlight. So Blobby can be funny in the same way that "cake is a made up drug" is funny. Being nonsensical is the point.
As for the people who think Blobby is genuinely, non-ironically funny... yeah, beats me 🤷
@delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @cstross
We've had a long tradition of jesters and fools and clowns, and really Blobby is just more of the same. It's just that I don't think that we had them on the telly with such saturation until Edmonds came along. We didn't have them making records, or invading other people's stuff, or merchandising.
By the way: If U.S.A. people tell you that they never had this, politely remind them that The Banana Splits existed 25 years before Blobby was invented.
♪ Tra La-La. La-la La La.
♪ Tra La-La. La-la La La.
You know that you just winced, U.S.A. people. (-:
I knew that I should have added 'or sung along'. (-:
@JdeBP @delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @cstross @JamesPadraicR
The Banana Splits were objectively awesome, and the days when the weather was right for us to receive the TV channel that they were on were the best days.
@gemitch @JdeBP @delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @cstross @JamesPadraicR
Concur. Was it Drooper with the giant rubber mallet/maul?
@cstross @delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @JamesPadraicR
I think that we can thank _Game for a Laugh_ and _Beadle's About_ for the addition of cruelty to the character. They made that sort of thing mainstream. Candid Camera was not as invested in making people suffer, as I remember it.
Had it not been for them, Blobby would have been the Phantom Flan Flinger but with a Christmas number 1 single and a BBC budget. TPFF never pranked unsuspecting people who thought that they were on some other show or doing something else.
People got a stunt pie in the face from a taxi driver, or Jim Davidson's chauffeur, or an ATV reporter; but they did so knowing that that was part of the #Tiswas format when they were booked.
#JimDavidson himself was TPFF — exactly once. Probably for the best that it stopped there, I think.
@http_error_418 @delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @JamesPadraicR
That's a good point. And that goes back to the 17th century and beyond.
Although, as I'm about to reply to @cstross , I think that we can thank something else for some specifically Blobby characteristics that xe has mentioned, which are not I think in #PunchAndJudy.
@JdeBP @cstross @delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @JamesPadraicR also, the McDonaldland characters (which were arguably ripped off from Sid and Marty Krofft’s work) are probably a more representative American example.
Then again, one can also draw a line from Ronald McDonald to Michael Jackson, possibly making him the true American Mr. Blobby analogue.
@JdeBP
> We've had a long tradition of jesters and fools and clowns, and really Blobby is just more of the same
Blobby wasn't any of those things. Blobby was a buffoon. Possibly a stylistic inspiration for the current US President?
'Buffoon' means clown, or jester, or fool, and comes from the Italian word for one.
(1/2)
@JdeBP
> Buffoon' means clown, or jester, or fool, and comes from the Italian word for one
Argument from etymology isn't particularly helpful. If you ask anyone who trains clowns, they will tell you that the clown and the buffoon are 2 different and contradictory things. Most importantly, clowns are never mean, and traditionally, they don't speak.
(2/2)
As for fool/ jester, this is a different thing again. A jester is a trickster and a satirist. They may be mean, but if so, they're always punching up. Directing their satire at whoever in the room has the most power.
The jester is the patron saint of the Clan McGillicuddy (we of the McGillicuddy Serious Party, and our pacifist warfare arm the McGillicuddy Highland Army), and some of us clansmen and clanswomen have trained as clowns. So I know of what I speak.
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