Memes—whether they make you feel like Success Kid or Grumpy Cat, they are ubiquitous, inescapable and often irresistible. With this in mind, we at ToyPhotographers.com have jumped on the bandwagon with both feet, but we’ve added a twist. We’re doing memes of memes, but with toys, of course. Memes inside memes? We must go deeper!

Here are our takes of our favourite Internet memes, recreated with toys.

Alien Guy: Dave DeBaeremaeker (@therealstudiodave)

My first thought for this challenge was the Alien Guy, who further down Tomek rightly identifies as Giorgio A. Tsoukalos (of Ancient Aliens). It’s a classic meme, and has so many uses. I decided to make mine with Doctor Strange and switch up the aliens to Dormammu. For the background I decided to make it a bit more MCU-related by adding in Thanos’s Infinity Gauntlet as a prop.

Bundled Up Bernie: Dave DeBaeremaeker (@therealstudiodave)

After we came up with the idea for this post, Bernie Sanders became his own meme due to how he was dressed—and his mittens—during the United States presidential inauguration. The meme was all about inserting Bernie into other images. This seemed right up my alley, and I figured he’d make an awesome Avenger.

I didn’t want to Photoshop him in, since this is a toy photography challenge, so I eventually found someone who had created a really accurate version of Bernie as a 3D printable model. I immediately printed and painted him, and stuck him in an assembly of Avengers.

Alien Guy: Tomek Lasek (@tomekskog)

Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, known as “Alien Guy” is an eulogist of ancient alien astronauts theory. He became a meme 11 years ago, and the most known, among other versions, is:

ALIENS

In this meme, I was taken by the delightfully absurd argument, which boils down to the statement: ALIENS. Even if it’s not aliens, you know, it’s still ALIENS.
I also like this meme because it became a meta-meme. The Alien Guy meme inspired memetists to create other, meta-versions of the original meme, like this one for exampl

HUMANS

It seems every race in space has its own Giorgio A. Tsoukalos. That’s quite a comforting thought, isn’t it?

This Is Fine. Alan Rappa (@alanrappa)

“This is fine…”

A dog drinking his coffee in the middle of a burning room uttering, “This is fine” has been my mantra for the past year now. When Dave suggested a meme-inspired post, I knew I had to pay tribute to this poor dog’s utterly defeated outlook on life (I feel you, dog, I feel you).

For my take on the meme, I opted to swap out the dog for Mando and Grogu to create a scene inspired by Season 1 of The Mandalorian.

The setup for this shot used a lot of red lights (including my chili peppers) and some plastic wrap to make the flames. I wanted Mando and Grogu to be right in the middle of the fire, like the dog from the meme, so I added plastic wrap to both the foreground and background.

If you want to learn more about making fake flames check out this post here where I go over some of my favorite techniques.

Mom, That’s Not Jesus (@teddi_toyworld)

I’ve always gotten a chuckle out of this meme. There are other caption variations (“Star Wars fans will see it…”), but this one is my favorite. After taking the toy photo, I had fun in Photoshop editing Obi-Wan to more closely match the photo. I had to find or make the props (I created the “Keep Calm” card in Canva) and locate a good spot in my house to replicate the overall setting. Then a little final editing to make the photo look a little more like a low-res meme with glossy jpeg softness.

Collecting the necessary elements.

The setting (behind the scenes).

What about you?

Have you ever created your own meme with toys?  Let us know about it by dropping a link to it in the comments below