Marselo

About

Marselo is a name given to the white ball mascot of Chilean lottery Kino 5 which has gained significant popularity in ironic memes among Spanish-speaking internet users in late 2019. Originally spread as an image macro of the mascot captioned "Marselo," the meme later spread to include video edits and memes imagining the character having its own cinematic universe. The meme is closely associated with musician Marshmello and the animated film Killer Bean.

Origin

In early May 2005, Powerball lottery Kino 5 was launched by Chilean company Lotería de Concepción.^[1] The mascot of the lottery, a white anthropomorphic Powerball carrying the number 5 (as in Kino 5) on its back has appeared in a number of TV commercials and other promotional materials for the lottery and on the official webpage^[2] (examples shown below).

Before March 6th, 2007, promo art showing the mascot greeting the viewer was created. The art was subsequently copied by the Venezuelan betting site Triples de Venezuela (shown below, left).^[3] Before October 23rd, 2019, an unknown user created an image macro based on the promo art captioned "marselo" (shown below, right).

Spread

On October 23rd, 2019, Instagram^[4] account kirbygang.mp3 posted the earliest known derivative meme, with the post gaining over 3,700 likes (shown below, left). On October 26th, 2019, Instagram^[5] user eplabox a video edit that received over 28,600 views and 4,500 likes in three months (shown below, right). In the edit, track "Alone" by electronic musician Marshmello was used, with Marshmello becoming associated with the meme in the following months.

Starting in early November 2019, the memes based on the character gained notable spread among the Spanish-speaking users. Notably, a series of image macros that imagined Marselo to be a film series have been created and circulated on Instagram, Facebook, Memedroid, Amino and other websites (examples shown below). In numerous examples, Marselo memes have been used in conjunction with Killer Bean.

Additionally, other Kino 5 commercials featuring the character have been utilized to created meme edits, particularly on Instagram. On Twitter,^[6][7] various users posted the original image macro and other memes based on the character in replies to the tweets posted by musician Marshmello, highlighting the similarity between the names.

On December 23rd, 2019, YouTuber^[8] DoctorDavy reported on the spread of the meme.

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References