Smug Wendy's

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Part of a series on @Wendys. [View Related Entries]

About

Smug Wendy's, also known as Wendy-chan, is an anime-style anthropomorphic personification of the @Wendys Twitter feed, which gained much online notoriety for its funny and sarcastic responses to customer complaints and questions. The character is based on the restaurant's mascot Wendy Thomas.

Origin

In 2012, Wendy’s VP of Advertising, Brandon Rhtoen hired Amy Brown to run Wendy’s social media accounts. According to an interview with Mashable,^[6] Rhoten hired her to be a “challenger with charm…the intent of the social media team is to represent the brand’s voice as best as they can. When folks say, ‘roast me,’ we’re going to have fun with that.” The Twitter account went viral in 2017 after an infamous interaction with a disgruntled customer who took issue with their slogan “fresh, never frozen,” leading to media coverage and praise from other Twitter users. In March of that year, Brown left the Wendy’s corporation and resigned as their social media manager, but the feed continued to post tweets in a similar playful voice (shown below).

On February 19th, 2017, Twitter^[8] user @ScottyArtz tweeted, "This is what I imagined when I first looked at @Wendys twitter, rofl." The tweet included an anime-style illustration of the character (shown below).

Spread

On April 14th, 2017, Twitter user @professorSugoi^[1] tweeted several illustrations of an anime depiction of the @Wendys Twitter feed, along with the caption “100% convinced that @Wendys is a smug anime girl” (shown below). Within 10 days, the tweet gained over 16,600 likes and 7,900 retweets.

On April 18th, Redditor CarnivorousL submitted @professorSugoi's illustrations to the /r/awwnime^[2] subreddit. On April 22nd, Twitter user @coralus_SF^[4] tweeted a Smug Wendy's illustration with the caption "She's beauty, she's grace, she's savage" (shown below, left). The same day, Tumblr user kyotemeru-arts^[5] posted an animated GIF of the character along with the caption "Have some frosty for that sick burn 🔥🔥🔥" (shown below, right).

On April 25th, the internet humor blog Dorkly^[3] published an article titled "The Internet Turned Wendy's Twitter Into a Smug Anime Girl," highlighting several examples of Smug Wendy's fan art. That day, Redditor Skeletoonz submitted a post about the illustrations to /r/MemeEconomy,^[7] urging readers to "invest with caution."