"this decade's Yellow Guy"

In the year 2017, I started thinking about the prevalence of yellow cartoon characters in American popular culture. I observed that each decade has its own iconic yellow character that rose to fame, got plastered over kitschy merchandise, then reached peak saturation and was replaced by a new, different Yellow Guy. I made this meme to succinctly illustrate my point. I posted it to my personal Facebook profile to little fanfare.

In 2022, I thought about this again, and the obvious question came to mind: where is this decade's Yellow Guy? Considering that all the prior Yellow Guys existed well before their respective reigns, it stood to reason that the Yellow Guy of the 2020s should already have emerged. In December 2022, I made a bold prediction: 2023 will see the emergence of this decade's Yellow Guy. Minions had long ago run their course, and their successor was late to arrive.

This tweet quickly caught the world's attention, amassing tens of thousands of likes. It was also widely screenshot and reposted to other websites, where it still circulates to this day, having outlived my Twitter account. Clearly, my prediction resonated powerfully with my fellow netizens.

So, you can imagine my alarm when December 2023 arrived, with no sign of a new yellow character. After briefly lamenting my failure, I did what any self-respecting prophetess would, and took matters into my own hands.

Behold, this decade's Yellow Guy:

His name is Caske, and let the record show that he emerged on December 9th, 2023. I hereby release him into the public domain, for anyone to utilize in their own works free of charge. He has this advantage over his predecessors: he is not owned by any single person or institution. This allows him to spread freely. Think of me as more of a conduit, the one who shepherded him into this world.

Considering his late arrival, I think it would be wise to skip the "wildly successful media franchise" part, and go directly to the "blatant cash-in" phase of his existence. Feel free to print his image on T-shirts, mugs, tote bags, beer koozies, pens, posters, shoes, decorative pillows, wall hangings, dishware, socks, cellphone cases, novelty lifestyle accessories, and whatever else you care to imagine. Sell, sell, sell to your heart's content. Still, I'd like to create some supplemental media to flesh out and promote the character. Assuming I don't change my mind or grow bored with the idea, I will update this page when I have more to say about that.