ꙮTHE YUPI ARCHIVEꙮ

HUGE UPDATE 3/2/23
y'all...I found him. expect more info soon and updates in the near future!!

small update 3/10/23!
at the moment I don't have a lot of free time on my hands, so work on this page is being put to the side; in the next few
months I should be past all the busy-ness and I'll be able to complete this preservation project! I will also be archiving
this page as it is, still available to view once the new one is complete. for now I encourage y'all to check out
yupidle.com's archived pages on the wayback machine, more specifically anything before about 2014. see ya!

"Bob" is the tentative name I have given to a small character I encountered while building my blinkies page. Bob is a small white blob character with dot eyes, a vertical line for a mouth, nubs for feet and arms, and an iconic three strands of hair.

The name is sourced from this archive.org page, where the person called them Bobs but gave no source. Sorry it's confusing since my name is also Bob. I promise it wasn't intentional. I've also seen them referred to as "Mini Gifs/Pixels" and in profile pic collections but that's exponentially less helpful. I was immediately enamored by this little creature. He(?) shares my name, he's cute, and he's mysterious. The drawing in the bottom right is by me, as well as the waving guy up top, btw.

I do not know where this character came from. I theorize that he's of japanese origin, but I've found him all across different languages and even in an adobe stock catalogue (stolen art??) so I legitimately don't know. The variations I have here are probably from countless different artists making their own sprite edits and versions of this little guy, which makes tracking him down that much more difficult.

If you have any Bobs I missed, can help me categorize them, or even know where the heck he came from, PLEASE contact me!! He's my internet white whale!

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UPDATE 11/29/2023:

I found new art with a very Bob-like drawing...he may be a cartoon steamed bun! I included the art in the first section, which labels Bob as a "ゆぴまん," or roughly, steamed pork bun (as far as I can tell. I don't speak Japanese in the slightest, so I'm forced to defer to machine translation). However, kaoani are ALSO sometimes known as steamed buns, so I'm both further into and farther away in my investigation.

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CURRENT COUNT: 181

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GENERAL

Objects, animals, professions, etc

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WEATHER

Weather-themed variants, often starring a little teru teru bōzu (homemade doll). Teru teru bōzu are made and hung up outside the window to prevent rain, or call for it in some cases. Makes sense it would be paired with weather variants, and also lines up with my theory that Bob originated on the Japanese internet.

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SITTERS

The slightly less common sitting variant which has larger eyes and a smile. I've also encountered some two-haired potential "knockoffs" here, although that term tends to be moot with the amount of editing being done to this character.

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this damn bee

Variants of this bee-Bob has appeared the most throughout my search. I don't know why. The second one here was ripped and spread across several stock photo services including Adobe, as mentioned in the opening paragraph.

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FANDOM

Licensed or estabished pop culture characters and creatures.

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UNCATEGORIZED

These ones I'm unsure of. Could be fandom, could be general references. I'm also not nearly knowledgeable enough on other cultures (or anime) to make a decision for some of these.

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