My Little Pony meme comic referencing Gak and Season 3

Gak

2012catchphraseclassic

Published August 20, 2026

Gak is a stretchy Mattel putty toy from 1992 that became a Brony chat meme in late 2012, after Nickelodeon's relaunched 'Gak is Back' commercials aired on repeat during My Little Pony livestreams and flooded chat rooms with the word.

mlp memes advertising memes nickelodeon memes livestream memes 2012 memes

Overview

Gak is a stretchy, slimy putty toy first released by Mattel in 1992, later relicensed by Nickelodeon for a 2012 comeback under the tagline 'Gak is Back'1. Its life as an internet meme is separate from the product itself, and comes almost entirely from Bronies mocking the toy's repetitive TV ads2.

The meme is basically the word 'Gak' typed over and over in chat rooms, plus fan art, image macros, animated GIFs, and YouTube Poop edits that splice the commercial audio into My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic scenes3. It is a fandom in-joke rather than a wider viral format, and it stuck because the ad ran back-to-back so many times during a single commercial break that the word lost meaning3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Bronystate livestream chat (viral spread on 4chan, Reddit, Tumblr)
Creator
Brony community
Date
2012

The Gak toy launched under Mattel in 1992 and went through several short-lived revivals before Nickelodeon picked up the license and started airing new 'Gak is Back' spots in 20121. The meme version traces to October 20, 2012, when four Gak commercials ran back-to-back during a single break on a Bronystate livestream replaying the My Little Pony episode 'Winter Wrap Up' on The Hub network3. Viewers in the chat started poking fun at the repetition, but audience numbers were low and the joke died the same night3.

How It Spread

The bit came back at full volume on November 10, 2012, during the season three premiere of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, when a much larger Bronystate audience saw the same Gak ads loop and flooded the chat with the word3. Within hours, Gak threads showed up on 4chan's /mlp/ board, an 'Ask Gak' blog appeared on Tumblr, and the ad was written up on the fan blog Equestria Daily2.

Redditor UDNTOME posted a thread titled 'Gak Gak Gak Gak Gak Gak' to r/MLPLounge, which pulled more than 165 upvotes and 115 comments over the next three days4. Non-profit Brony chats picked up the same joke the same night, so Bronystate moderators eventually set the chat to auto-kick anyone typing the word to stop the spam3.

After the initial burst, fans kept the bit alive with image macros, GIFs, and YouTube Poop edits that dropped the commercial's voiceover into MLP scenes, along with music remixes built from the ad audio3.

How to Use This Meme

The standard Gak post is just the word repeated, often as a wall of text or captioned over a My Little Pony screenshot. YouTube Poop creators typically splice the 'Gak is Back' voiceover into cartoon clips for short, absurdist edits3. Outside the Brony context, the word also carries unrelated slang meanings, including drug slang, that are tracked on Urban Dictionary5.

Frequently Asked Questions