Mr Rental

About

Mr Rental is the titular mascot character of the Australian company Mr Rental focussed on renting a variety of products. Around late 2015, the official Facebook page for the character started accompying more memes in their posts, before also being featured in GiIvaSunner videos in July 2016.^[6]

Origin

Mr Rental began in 1983 when founders Glen and Kerrianne Hickman moved to Bribie Island, north of Brisbane, in Queensland, Australia; the first store opened by 1991. Today the Mr Rental group services thousands of customers in Australia and New Zealand.^[1] Mr Rental also maintained an official Facebook page for their brand for years.^[2] Over the years, the account has posted hundreds of messages in character of Mr Rental, including many promotional posts about the chain and various life hacks.

Spread

In 2015, the Facebook page suddenly started using various internet memes in their posts, however always maintaining a theme of renting products in the posts. The earliest notable example of this dates back to June 30th, 2015, with "The Rentinator" (shown below, left), a play on "The Terminator" in relation to promotional post for the release of the Terminator: Genisys film.^[3] These posts increased in December of that year, likewise to the oddity of the Photoshops accompying the posts, such as a post making fun of Kanye West and a Merry Christmas message showing Nyan Cat (shown below, middle and right).^[4][5]

Likewise to the usage of memes, the popularity of the posts also increased throughout 2016; frequently gaining thousands of likes. The posts also began to use a frequent theme of disliking outright buying products opposed to renting them, referring to those that buy outright as "chumps," and started to include "Mr John Cena" at various occassions. As of October 2016, the official Facebook page managed to gather over 53,000 likes.

Various Examples

[The following examples were all posted by Mr Rental on his official Facebook page]

In GiIvaSunner Videos

According to the SiIvaGunner Wikia,^[7] Mr Rental first started appearing in SiIvaGunner videos on July 11th, 2016, during a SiIvaDirect stream.^[8] Various animations were later uploaded to SiIvaGunner's Youtube channel throughout July and August, each managing to get over 50,000 views in the 3 months after being uploaded (shown below, chronologically).

This attention likewise hasn't gone unnoticed to the Mr Rental Facebook page, who mentioned "Mr Gunner" in reply to a question regarding his opinion on high quality video game rips on July 29th (shown below, left).^[9] Following the videos, fans of SiIvaGunner began to include Mr Rental in the lore surrounding various other recurring elements in SiIvaGunner's videos, such as The Flintstones theme and Snow Halation. Mr Rental also gained a personality of liking high quality video game rips while hating bad mashups within the lore, following the release of a mashup on August 20th in which he sings about these themes (shown below, right).

External References