About
Smeel refers to an exploitable image meme featuring characters from the Hasbro franchise My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic looking at the viewer, with a large grin on their face. It is frequently used as a reaction image in a similar manner to Twiface.
Origin
The meme originates from a piece of Rainbow Dash concept art[2] (shown below, left) drawn by MLP storyboard artist Sabrina Alberghetti, known by her online handle Sibsy.[1] The first proper variant of the meme was a colored and vectored image of Rainbow Dash[3] (shown below, right) based off of Sibsy’s sketches.
Spread
On February 11th, 2012,[4]DeviantArt user PikachuX1000 created versions for the rest of the main cast using the Rainbow Dash vector as the base. The next day, a version featuring Princess Celestia was also created.[5]
As of July 2015, searching for “Smeel” on DeviantArt returns 922 results,[6] while Derpibooru returns 54 results.[7] A DeviantArt group dedicated to Smeel images was created on May 19th, 2012, and has 94 members.[8]
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External References
[3]DeviantArt – Rainbow Dash SMEEL
[4]DeviantArt – Twilight Sparkle SMEEL
[5]DeviantArt – Celestia SMEEL
[8]DeviantArt – Smeel-Collection