Lex Luthor Took Forty Cakes is a panel scanned from a 1978 DC-licensed children's book called The Super Dictionary, showing the supervillain sprinting away with a cart of cakes. Rediscovered on YTMND in 2005, the absurd illustration turned into one of the earliest recurring image jokes of the pre-Reddit forum era and later mutated into the popular 'kek' image board variant.
Origin
The Super Dictionary was published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in July 1978 and organized more than 4,000 words into example sentences starring Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash and other DC heroes[3]. The Luthor cake panel sat inside the book unnoticed by internet culture for nearly three decades. The earliest known digital resurfacing was a YTMND page uploaded on September 8, 2005, which put the illustration back into wider circulation[1].
- Platform: The Super Dictionary (print source) / YTMND (viral spread)
- Creator: Unknown
- Date: 2005
Overview
The image originates from The Super Dictionary, a 1978 educational reference book that used DC characters to demonstrate vocabulary words[3]. In the panel tied to the number 'forty', Lex Luthor is drawn wheeling a cart piled with cakes, an image whose deadpan children's-book framing became the whole gag for later remixers[2].
The meme is the image itself, usually posted with a paraphrased caption reading something like 'When no one was looking, Lex Luthor took forty cakes. That's as many as four tens. And that's terrible.' A later variation swapped 'cakes' for the phonetically identical 'kek', turning the panel into a running gag on image boards once 'kek' overtook older laughter terms in the late 2000s[1].
How It Spread
Through 2006 and 2007 the scan hopped across the early social web. Digg users pushed it under the headline 'Oh No Lex Luthor stole 40 cakes'[2] and Collegehumor added it to its picture archive[4]. A 4chan thread on /co/ (post 1249916) kept it moving through the board circuit[3].
In May 2009, Nextround ran a post titled 'Lex Luthor Stole Forty Cakes' that treated the image as an already familiar joke, with commenters riffing on the wildness of 1970s counting books[5]. Recurring threads about the panel appeared on SuperheroHype, World of Warcraft general chat and Ebaum's World during the same era[3]. Once 'kek' displaced older internet laughter slang, users rebuilt the caption with the homophone in place of 'cake', giving the panel a second run through image board culture[1].
How to Use
The typical format is to post the illustration with a caption riffing on Luthor's cake theft, often quoting a variant of 'That's as many as four tens. And that's terrible' to play up the paraphrased educational tone of the original book[2]. The kek variant swaps 'cake' for 'kek' and works as a shorthand laugh reaction on image boards[1].
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lex Luthor Took Forty Cakes?
It's an illustration from the 1978 Super Dictionary that shows Lex Luthor stealing a cart of forty cakes, later recycled as an image board meme[3].
Where did Lex Luthor Took Forty Cakes come from?
The panel comes from The Super Dictionary published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in July 1978, and first surfaced online as a YTMND page uploaded September 8, 2005[1].
What does Lex Luthor Took Forty Cakes mean?
It's a nonsense joke about a supervillain committing a petty theft, drawn in earnest for a children's vocabulary entry about the number 40[2].
How do you use Lex Luthor Took Forty Cakes?
Share the image with a caption paraphrasing the '40 cakes, that's as many as four tens' line, or post the 'kek' remix on image boards for a laugh reaction[1].
Is Lex Luthor Took Forty Cakes still popular?
It holds classic status as one of the earliest recurring joke images of the pre-Reddit forum era, and the kek variant kept it alive on image boards through the 2010s[1].
