What is Crayon Eater Marines Eat Crayons?

It's a running military joke that claims US Marines are so dumb they eat crayons, spread as image macros, TikToks and edible-crayon merch since the mid-2010s[1].

Where did Crayon Eater Marines Eat Crayons come from?

The earliest known meme was posted to Imgur on August 24, 2016 by a user named HarlemStruggle, though Mil Treats traces the underlying joke to a 2012 Army-vs-Marine cartoon[3][6].

What does Crayon Eater Marines Eat Crayons mean?

It's an inter-service insult mocking the perceived low intelligence of the US Marine Corps, in the same family as older nicknames like 'jarhead' and 'bullet sponge'[2].

How do you use Crayon Eater Marines Eat Crayons?

People post photos or videos of Marines eating crayons, share cartoons of Army soldiers handing Marines helmets full of crayons, or drop the MARINE backronym ('Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Essential') as the punchline[6].

Is Crayon Eater Marines Eat Crayons still popular?

The joke is a fixture of modern US military humor and got fresh life on TikTok in 2021, with videos like @sweetsupportusa's pulling more than 890,000 plays[3].

Why do people say Marines eat crayons?

Other military branches use the crayon gag to tease Marines about their reputation for being tough but academically 'rough around the edges,' a stereotype rooted in friendly inter-service rivalry[4].

Who started the Marines eat crayons joke?

No single creator is credited, but the Facebook page Untied Status Marin Crops helped push it mainstream with Dolan and Spoderman-style posts in May and October 2017[3].

Did the Marine Corps respond to the crayon joke?

The Corps embraced it publicly, posting a Facebook video on National Crayon Day, March 31, 2018, showing a Marine opening an MRE from the Army and finding crayons inside[6].

Are there real edible crayons for Marines?

Marine veteran Frank Manteau developed Crayons Ready-to-Eat, colorable chocolate crayons made with chocolatier Cassandra Gordon after three months of research[2].

What does the MARINE backronym mean?

It stands for 'Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Essential,' and shows up alongside the crayon joke as a self-deprecating punchline in Marine-themed posts[6].

Was the crayon joke around before the internet?

Task & Purpose's reporting suggests it's a fairly recent invention, with Terminal Lance creator Maximilian Uriarte confirming there was 'no mention of crayons' when he left the Corps in 2010[1].

Crayon Eater Marines Eat Crayons

2016catchphraseclassic

Published August 12, 2026

Crayon Eater Marines Eat Crayons is a running military joke claiming that US Marines are dumb enough to snack on crayons, born from inter-service rivalry inside the American armed forces. The gag surfaced on Imgur and Facebook in the mid-2010s and got so big that Marines embraced it themselves, spawning edible crayon merchandise and an official 2018 National Crayon Day video from the Marine Corps.

stereotype memes military memes catchphrase memes image macro memes self deprecating memes

Overview

Crayon Eater Marines Eat Crayons is a catchphrase and image-macro joke used by other branches of the US military, and by Marines themselves, to poke fun at the perceived low intelligence of the United States Marine Corps1. The joke pictures Marines mistaking Crayolas for food, riffing on the older stereotype that eating crayons is something toddlers and dim kids do3. Other branches shorten the insult by calling Marines 'Crayon Eaters,' a nickname that sits alongside older ones like 'jarhead,' 'leatherneck' and 'bullet sponge'2.

TikTok

The format shows up as captioned photos of Marines with mouths full of crayons, cartoon comics where an Army soldier hands a Marine a helmet packed with glue and crayons, and TikTok videos where creators eat, review or hand out crayons on camera6. Marines took the insult and ran with it, turning up at military balls and social media posts munching crayons on purpose6. The joke often gets paired with the backronym MARINE, standing for 'Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Essential'6.

Origin & Background

Platform

Imgur (earliest known meme) / Facebook (viral spread)

Date

2016

The exact starting point is fuzzy, but the joke is a fairly recent addition to Marine Corps humor. Maximilian Uriarte, who draws the popular Terminal Lance comic strip and left the Marines in 2010, told Task & Purpose that when he was on active duty there was 'no mention of crayons,' though the general 'Marines are dumb' joke was around1. Frank Manteau, a Marine veteran who joined in 1995, said the same thing about his era, when the standard insults were 'jarhead' and 'bullet sponge'2.

The earliest known meme specifically about Marines eating crayons was posted to Imgur on August 24, 2016 by a user named HarlemStruggle, and picked up more than 2,000 upvotes over the following seven years3. A Quora thread from January 2, 2017 asked 'Why are there so many jokes about Marines eating crayons?' and drew replies from purported former Marine infantrymen, including one written in deliberate baby talk ('i dunt no / krainz r yumie / i liek creola') that pulled in over 300 upvotes3. Merch site Mil Treats traces the joke back further, to a 2012 cartoon of an Army soldier handing a Marine a helmet filled with glue and crayons, and marks 2015 to 2017 as the years it really caught on6.

How It Spread

The Facebook page Untied Status Marin Crops, known for posting deliberately misspelled Dolan and Spoderman-style memes, is often credited with pushing the crayon joke into wider circulation3. Two of its early crayon posts, from May 12, 2017 and October 3, 2017, pulled in roughly 700 and 1,500 likes respectively over the next five years3. From there the gag jumped to Reddit and Quora threads, where service members from every branch traded variations of the insult5.

By 2018 the Marine Corps itself was in on the joke. On National Crayon Day that year, March 31, the official Marine Corps Facebook account posted a video showing a Marine opening an MRE supposedly gifted by the Army and finding crayons inside6. Task & Purpose later described the clip as the Corps 'making light of the joke' rather than pushing back on it1.

TikTok took the trend into the 2020s. On January 28, 2021, creator @sweetsupportusa posted a video joking about Marines eating crayons that pulled in more than 890,000 plays and 170,000 likes within a year3. On October 2, 2021, TikToker @bigwill1997 posted a lore explainer about the crayon joke that racked up over 50,000 plays and 3,000 likes in three months3. The USMC-themed T-shirt and merch scene picked it up around the same time, with brands treating 'Crayon Eater' as a badge of honor4.

How to Use This Meme

Using the format typically means leaning into the 'Marines are dumb' bit rather than defending against it. Common versions include photos or videos of a Marine eating a crayon straight from the box, image macros of an Army or Navy character offering a Marine crayons as bait or reward, and captioned reaction images where a Marine's answer to any question is 'crayons.' Non-Marines often use the joke as a friendly inter-service insult, while Marines typically flip it into a badge of honor, with the MARINE backronym or lines like 'we know, we eat crayons' as the punchline4.

Cultural Impact

The joke got embraced hard enough by the Corps that it spawned actual products. Frank Manteau, a 1995 to 2002 Marine veteran, launched Crayons Ready-to-Eat, a line of colorable chocolate crayons made specifically as a Marine-themed novelty2. Manteau came up with the idea while working on his daughter's high school color guard project, absentmindedly put a wax crayon in his mouth, and spent three months researching edible versions before teaming up with chocolatier Cassandra Gordon to develop the recipe2. Multiple other Marine veterans have since launched their own edible-crayon brands1. PETA has also famously protested the Marines, which the crayon-eater community treats as more evidence the branch is unbothered by outside criticism6.

Fun Facts

The Marine Corps is the only US military branch PETA has publicly protested, a fact crayon-eater merch sites wear as proof the Corps is beyond caring6.

Terminal Lance cartoonist Maximilian Uriarte confirmed the crayon bit did not exist during his Marine service, which ended in 2010, even though the general 'Marines are dumb' joke was around1.

Frank Manteau found a Singaporean company making chocolate crayons with the sugar and chocolate stripped out to stop kids eating them, which he rejected as not really edible2.

Manteau originally ran a woodworking business called Kamikaze Woodwerks in San Diego before pivoting into edible crayons2.

The video game community briefly cloned the format as 'Titans eat crayons' in Destiny, until the original creator publicly walked it back over ableism concerns3.

Derivatives & Variations

Crayons Ready-to-Eat, Frank Manteau's line of colorable chocolate crayons pitched at Marines[2]

Mil Treats' branded 'Crayon Eater' merch and USMC-themed edible crayon products[6]

The MARINE backronym, 'Muscles Are Required, Intelligence Not Essential,' used as a punchline in crayon posts[6]

The Marine Corps' own 2018 National Crayon Day Facebook video showing an MRE full of crayons from the Army[6]

Titans Eat Crayons, a spinoff from the video game Destiny that the original poster later disavowed as ableist[3]