The 'Sponge Man Ice Cone' meme features a bizarre, low-budget bootleg toy of SpongeBob SquarePants designed as an ice cream cone. Emerging from Chinese e-commerce sites and later gaining viral traction on platforms like Reddit and Twitter around 2019, the image became a staple of surreal humor and shitposting. Its popularity stems from its unsettlingly distorted facial features and the literal, translated name often associated with it. Often appearing in 'deep-fried' formats, the meme represents the peak of ironic internet culture where nonsensical consumer products become legendary symbols of absurdity.