One of the great mysteries of our time

Almost everyone seems to know about this – the pointy “S” thing you and your classmates drew all over everything from books, notebooks, and desk tops. But where the hell did it come from? It is a real life meme, which went viral before the internet existed. But the origins are a mystery.

It seems like it is found on every continent in the world, always somewhere in middle-school or early high-school. A few people claim to have seen these as far back as the 1950's. It's kind of weird that so many different people in different times and places all seem to doodle the same thing with no knowledge of what it is or represents.

The mysterious symbol, which consists of 14 lines that forms a stylized “S”, has been called many things. Most common monikers are the “Super S” or “Stussy S”.

Stussy is a surfwear clothing brand started in the early 1980s. “No, this is not an original Stussy Logo,” stated Emmy Coates, who has worked alongside founder Shawn Stussy since 1985. “I personally get asked this a lot, but people have been drawing this S long before Stussy was established. People have just assumed it was Stussy and it’s sort of spread from there. It’s actually quite amusing.” So the Stussy brand clearly came after the origination of the symbol.

Other similarities can be found in other logos, such as for the band Styx, car maker Suzuki, or Netherlands passenger railway operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen. People who were kids in the 50’s and 60’s have reported memories of doodling the "S" and called it the "Superman S", even though it does not have any striking resemblance to any Superman logo ever used in comics, TV or movies.

Some say that it has origins from graffiti. It is an easy symbol to learn and reproduce, and could have had a start this way. In fact, in the 80’s and 90’s when the "S" was at the peak of its popularity, some schools actually banned kids from drawing it, claiming that it had gang affiliation.

Another fairly logical sounding theory is that the symbol gets is origination from a puzzle book that was released by Scholastic books back in the 1950’s. The original puzzle simply showed two rows of three vertical lines, and the challenge was to turn them into the letter S by adding eight more straight lines. This became wide spread because everybody used to get Scholastic books in elementary school at one point or another.

It is pretty much agreed that everyone either drew it themselves or knew someone that did. But why? Why did you draw them? What does it/did it symbolize to you? And who taught it to you? That is the mystery. It seems like children all over the planet doodle this, but no one can truly pinpoint when or where it started.

The world may never know…