Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of SUVs with their rear windows covered by white stick-figure stickers of the driver’s family members and their names. (I’m in California, if it matters.)
The stickers look somewhat like the ones here, but I don’t think those are “authentic”. The ones I’ve seen all look very similar and seem to have come from the same source.
Anyone know what the deal with them is? Who makes them and how/why are they suddenly becoming popular?
OMG, looks like a replacement for “Baby on Board”…
Ugh, I hope that doesn’t make its way east.
It seems that for now, it’s mainly a SoCal thing.
Looks like it has spread virally; people see the stickers while out driving (as you did), and wonder about them. Some people decide, “Hmm…I’d like some of those twee stickers for my own car!”
The only “origins” info I could find was this:
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/31/soccer_mom_metadata.html
Love the page name in the URL!
I’ve also seen personalized address labels with these things.
I’ve seen one or two in the past few years on the east coast.
The annoying trends around here are the high school sports/activity team stickers (COUGAR VOLLEYBALL, SPARTAN DANCE TEAM) and minivans with shoe polished girls sports team kudos (We love you Kayley! Go Brittney!)
That’s weird. I’ve seen those in Mexico on Mexican cars. Actually SUV’s. I wonder why the SUV connection is there, or maybe they’re not just noticable on cars?
A lot of SUVs here have them. They’ll usually have something like “The Ortiz Family” underneath the stick figures. I was behind one today- it had the mom and the dad, two little girls, one little toddler girl, and one baby. I was thinking what a pain it would be to have to scrape off and replace the kids as they grew.
I’ve never seen these here in Toronto, but now I’ll keep a lookout. Thanks for the warning! 
Of course, being the twisted artistic-type person I am, and being that I have a copy of Photoshop, I think it’s high time I made a few of my own. The subject of pets alone needs some amplification. I just saw a dog there. What if you have a ferret or an iguana?
They are very common down here in South Florida. I’d say–off the top of my head–that 1 out of every 5 car has them. I think they are more common on SUVs simply because families are more likely to ride around in SUVs. I’ve also seen them on mini-vans.
Not that anyone asked, but I hate them with a passion and can’t wait for this fad to go away.
The stickers I’ve seen here on the East Coast are the 'In Memory Of" type.
They usually list a person’s name and their birth and death dates, or just years of birth and death, nearly always in Old English or some Gothic font, or some drippy-blood font.
They always take up the entire back window.
I told my husband if he does that when I die, I’m coming back to haunt him.
I see these almost exclusively on cars owned by people of Mexican citizenship and/or descent.
FWIW, “Baby on Board” stickers make me want to go on a killing spree. I should drive extra careful just because you’ve spawned and have the nerve to rub it in my
face?* The stick figure family stickers don’t bother me, though.
I never saw them (I live in San Diego, and used to live on the East Coast) until I started going to school in East County, but the “In Loving Memory” stickers bother me too. I saw one recently that had a picture of Shake from Aqua Teen. WTH? I don’t believe. Check it out, though: I saw it in my rear view mirror and said “What does that sticker say? It looks like In Loving Memory but it has a picture of Shake on it.” The guy in the passenger seat looked back and said “Seems to read ‘Yakalov Shirnoff’. More or less.” Neither of us stopped laughing for hours. Had to be there, probably.
I see these family stickers a lot around Orlando, too. Mostly on SUVs, but I’ve seen them on all kinds of cars.
Okay, this probably isn’t an appropriate contribution to a GQ thread, but I really have to say:
EEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW!!!
A memorial sticker in a “drippy-blood” font?! :eek: Sheesh, why not paste up photo-transparencies of the autopsy while you’re at it? Yuck!!!
So the child abductors/child molesters can figure out the best cars to follow, I presume. :eek: Seriously, why would anybody with functioning brain cells want to advertise the name and composition of their family, right above their license plate number, to tens of thousands of strangers on the interstate?
Or north.
The BOB placards, were originally meant to be only displayed when there was an actual Baby in the vehicle, in case of an accident, so the baby wouldn’t get lost in the wreckage. Though not likely to happen anyway, some folks worry about everything.
I’ve seen a few of them them, but fortunately they’re quite rare in Northeast Ohio. They seem to take the form not of stick figures, but of cartoon heads, much like the customized address labels that have been around for the past couple of years.
I do see a lot of soccer ball stickers in the back windows of SUVs, though.
I think they’re put there to justify driving a big gas guzzler. Perhaps less nasty looks from others - I dunno.
The stick figure families were visible all over the road when I lived in El Paso. Haven’t seen a single one since I moved to Austin. Austinites prefer to advertise their kids’ school activities.
I did a camping trip in Baja Mexico in the winter of, uhm, I think it was 2003, and those were very common. I’m kind of surprised that the stickers aren’t more popular in the US.
We don’t have any kids but we do have a hefty clatter of cats. Maybe I should be the first one in Austin to get one of these – a man, a woman, and a string of kitties. It would be “weird”, anyway.