Shirley Temple Boxset Commercial

About

Shirley Temple Boxset Commercial refers to a ubiquitous advertisement for a DVD collection of films starring early 20th-century child actress Shirley Temple. The commercial was a staple of Cartoon Network programming in the early 2010s, which led to it being well-remembered by many young viewers of the channel and later meme'd by those viewers.

Origin

The Shirley Temple Little Darling Boxset appears to have been solely a TV offer, as there is little information available as to who was producing the box set. The boxset's website features an address of "Shirley Temple Little Darling Collection" in Aston, Pennsylvania.^[1] Additionally, the date it first aired is unclear. The earliest upload of the commercial to YouTube by ewebreview on April 30th, 2011 (shown below). YouTuber AtlantaCommercials96 wrote that the commercial aired during a February 2011 airing of the film Space Jam on Cartoon Network.^[2]

Spread

Years later, the commercial was widely remembered, as many internet users reported seeing the commercial often while watching Cartoon Network when they were children. According to memedocumentation,^[3] the commercial began becoming popular as a meme on Tumblr following an August 4th, 2015 post by evaunit08, who wrote, "only americans will understand: shirley temple DVD set infomercial." The post gained over 442,000 notes, thanks in part to a reblog from SearchKissDestroy, who posted a photoshopped image with quotes from the commercial (shown below, left). An edit by user little-ranting-college-boy parodied the ad in an It's More Likely Than You Think edit, gaining over 61,000 notes (shown below, right). On December 30th of that year, Buzzfeed^[4] wrote about the ad.

The commercial continued to be the subject of memes after the following years. On December 20th, 2017, Redditor Firedomm posted an Insecurity / Anxiety Text Message meme about the commercial to /r/memes (shown below, left). On November 1st, 2019, a You Know What, I'm Just Gonna Say It meme using the commercial was posted to /r/okbuddyretard, gaining over 24,000 points (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References