Arthur is one of PBS’ most memorable animated franchises in the network’s history, and one iconic scene is celebrating a major milestone. Marc Brown’s Arthur books first made the jump to screen 28 years ago airing its first episode with PBS back in 1996, and went on for 25 seasons before it came to an end. It’s one of those animated series that many generations of audiences have likely seen at least once, and even more so will likely fondly remember some of its biggest moments. In fact, one of those moments found a whole new kind of life outside of the animated series.
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“Arthur’s Big Hit” was one such episode that has gone on to live far beyond its original airing. First hitting PBS on October 4th back in 1999, it’s now been 25 years since Arthur infamously hit his younger sister D.W. It was already a big episode in its own right as it showcased some violence between the young siblings (which was yet another major topic the animated series often tackled), but then found life in a whole new way thanks to a meme that started circulating and reminding fans all about this episode all those years later.
What Is Arthur’s Big Hit?
“Arthur’s Big Hit” was one of the segments that made their debut with Arthur‘s Season 4 premiere. It’s an episode where Arthur himself wonders if its okay to hit someone. It starts with him building a special model plane, and his younger sister D.W. continues to interrupt the process by either trying to play it or calling it broken. She goes as far as playing with it while Arthur’s waiting for the paint on it to dry, and thus leads him to needing to paint it all over again. D.W. then goes even further and fully plays with the model and throws it out the window.
Rather than apologize for breaking his plane, D.W. claims Arthur built it incorrectly as it’s a plane that can’t actually fly. This makes Arthur so angry that not only does D.W. not acknowledge what she had done, nor does she apologize as she just believes he built it in the wrong way. Yelling about the fact he told her not to touch the plane, Arthur punches D.W. in the arm and a classic meme was born from there.
How Arthur’s First Became A Meme
The image of Arthur’s clenched fist is likely more famous that any other scene from the actual series’ history. Beginning with someone on Twitter sharing the image of the fist noting how many emotions were just in one image back in 2016, it then quickly took off as a funny way to reflect how someone angry was over a humorous subject. It started being so widespread in usage that it had since inspired Halloween costumes and more. The combination of the childhood classic with such a violent act just made it inherently funny to see and use in jokes.
The clenched fist isn’t quite used as much as it was a few years ago, but it’s really only a matter of time before it pops up again. As it celebrates the 25th anniversary of the original Arthur episode it spawned from, now is the perfect opportunity to start cycling it into pop culture once again. If not, there are plenty of other big Arthur moments throughout the 25 seasons that would be perfect for memes in the years to come. It’s just got that level of staying power.
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