Game Boy Mom

About

Game Boy Mom is a 1989 picture of a family huddled around a Game Boy Nintendo console, depicting a mother, three boys and a girl staring at the screen. The image has been the subject of memes since 2012 and resurfaced in October 2023 after a YouTuber discovered the identity of the family.

Origin

On June, 12th, 2012, Redditor^[1] u/ZosaCloud uploaded a picture of a family with a mom in the center playing a Game Boy console. The post, titled "My Mom helping me through a hard level in Super Mario Land on the day Nintendo Gameboy was released," garnered over 7,500 likes and 1,400 comments in 11 years (shown below).

Spread

The image became a prominent topic of discussion and a meme on Reddit over the following years, particularly as users tried to uncover the real identity of the family. On October 2nd, 2023, YouTuber^[2] SakuraStardust^[2] discovered that the picture was taken in 1989 by a family from Prince Albert, Canada. The video (shown below) amassed over 37,000 views and 2,900 likes in a week.

In the video, YouTuber Stardust revealed that the "Game Boy Mom" was a woman named Debra Tooley, a mother of four children who was the only one who could beat a particularly hard level in Super Mario Land game.

The picture was also photoshopped and turned into image macro memes on social media. For instance, on February 11th, 2020, an unknown user posted an example to the /r/Gameboy^[3] subreddit with the picture of the family paired with the caption "A mom helping her kids beat a hard level in Super Mario Land (1991)," which amassed roughly 90 likes and nine comments in three years (seen below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References