Obama Snowball

2009image macroclassic

Published September 24, 2026

Obama Snowball is a 2009 image macro built around press photos of then-President Barack Obama winding up to throw a snowball, paired with edited-in targets like an orange cat or George W. Bush. It started as a Toothpaste For Dinner comic on Superpoop.com and hit critical mass through two back-to-back Digg threads that flipped Obama from villain to hero.

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Overview

Obama Snowball is a photo-based image macro from early 2009 that shows then-President Barack Obama winding up to throw a snowball1. The joke exists in two flavors: a hand-drawn 4-panel comic by artist Drew where Obama pelts a small kid, and a photo edit that drops an orange cat into the frame as Obama's supposed target3.

The bit works because Obama's stance in the source photos looks weirdly aggressive for a politician, and inserting an unrelated victim plays that framing for laughs4. Later versions swapped the cat for George W. Bush during the December 2008 Iraqi shoe-throwing incident, which flipped Obama from bully to defender3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Superpoop.com / Digg (viral spread)
Creator
Drew
Date
2009

The comic version came first, posted January 30th, 2009 on Superpoop.com, the humor site run by Toothpaste For Dinner artist Drew1. The 4-panel strip showed Obama chucking a snowball at a child2.

About a week later, on February 5th, 2009, a Digg user posted a photo set from 2007 titled 'Obama is Kind of a Dick,' inserting an orange cat as the fake target4. The actual target in the original 2007 press shots was a campaign staffer who was cropped out of the edit3.

How It Spread

On February 7th, 2009, two days after the cat version made the rounds, another Digg thread appeared under the title 'Obama is Kind of a Hero,' this time swapping the cat for the George W. Bush shoe-throwing scene from December 20084. The remix used the same base image of Obama mid-throw but recast him as an avenger rather than an aggressor3.

Riding the reach of both Digg posts, Drew's Superpoop built a Presidential Snowball Generator that let users drop their own targets into the scene2. The tool kept the format alive by making it trivial to spin up new versions without any image editing skills, which is how the meme kept circulating beyond its initial week-long news cycle1.

How to Use This Meme

Versions typically start from the same 2007 photo of Obama mid-windup and paste in whatever target the creator wants roasted, often a public figure, a political opponent, or a small animal for absurdist effect. A short caption above or below the image is a common convention.

Frequently Asked Questions