Unicorn Charles

Apparently, this "Charlie the Unicorn" cartoon has been a mainstay of the Internet for well over a year now. I had never heard of it before, but built a Mahalo page for it this morning, which you can check out here.



This thing is pretty strange. Two enthusiastic unicorns with whiny voices wake up a grumpy unicorn named Charlie and beg him to go with them to Candy Mountain. They speak in halting simple sentences and repeat things a lot.

"Hey, Charlie, we found a map to Candy Mountain. Candy Mountain, Charlie! Come with us to Candy Mountain. Yeah, Charlie! It'll be an adventure. We're going on an adventure, Charlie!"

It just goes on and on like this.

Now, okay, it does built up to a decent punchline, and I'm sure the point of much of the build-up is to be annoying. (After all, Charlie is also clearly annoyed by these other two unicorns).

But I'm still kind of perplexed as to why this has become such a phenomenon. I can usually appreciate running Internet gags, like goofy photos of cats with silly captions or the Star Wars Kid or Homestar Runner. But to me, this is just really really annoying.

I suppose a lot of humor for kids of a certain age is just naturally annoying and repetitive. Really, I envy the kids who get a huge kid out of this. I'm sure, once you think it's funny, endless amounts of joy can be squeezed from dropping "Charlie" references into daily conversation. (People have been making Charlie mash-ups for some time, putting the audio behind video game images or scenes from CW shows).