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Marshmallow Hell

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And now Negi wants a cookie.
"Hey-wai-don't touch me! DON'T HUG ME! I'm not a doll, you know! I can't breathe- *mggggfffh*"
Raspberyl getting picked up by Sapphire, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice

One Head Taller, with quite a few more in front.

Usually found within anime or manga, also known as ぱふぱふ/pafu-pafu, a usually shorter, male character becomes smooshed in the chest area of a taller female character. They get a cleavage cushion. A push-up pillow. A rack resting place. A maternal muffler, you get the picture...

If she's Hot For Student, she may use this as an initial seduction tactic, but most of the time, the hugger is unaware of (or unable to seenote ) the implications of the situation. This is often done for pure Fanservice value, but may also be used for comedy in one (or both) of two ways:

  • The guy in question is a little too young or innocent to appreciate the situation, and is more embarrassed than enjoying it (especially when it happens in public). In certain cases, the boy may be just old enough to appreciate the situation, but not old enough to control either his reaction to it or his mortification at the same.
  • The poor boy is quite literally being smothered within the process, as the girl is really well-endowed.

Because of that last one, this is sometimes initiated from behind the victim instead, allowing both him to breathe and the audience to see his reaction better.

While this trope is almost Always Female, there does exist a male variant where the Hunk draws someone into their pecs a tad too forcefully. There is also a variant where a tall buxom woman pulls a shorter gal into a sapphicating embrace.

The name comes from a scene in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, where poor Negi nearly gets drowned when several girls do this to him at once while he was partly submerged. Poor, lucky bastard. On occasion, this can overlap I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!.

See also Funbag Airbag and Thanks for the Mammary for accidental collisions of the type. See Boob-Based Gag for other jokes about boobs and Buxom Beauty Standard for when large breasts and considered attractive. Not to be confused with Marshmallow Dream. (However, it's only a matter of time before they're mixed into one trope.) Compare Cry into Chest and Cooldown Hug. Contrast Torpedo Tits, where the individual is deliberately attacking with breast-mounted weaponry.


Examples

    open/close all folders 

    Advertising 
  • In one Confused.com advert, Bertha puts Cara's face in hers.
  • A beer commercial had some guys at a nightclub thinking it would be a great joke to set up a short friend with a very tall woman as a dance partner. Cut to them looking on enviously as he's smooched into her chest for a slow dance.

    Card Games 

    Comic Books 
  • Danger Girl: In "The Chase", Valerie complains about Sydney's large breasts pushing up against her while they and Sonya are in a cramped van.
  • In 2011's Hack/Slash #4, Cassie does this to Vlad to get him to snap out of his slasher-induced altered state of mind.
  • In Hate, Buddy takes his elderly dad to a strip joint and is shocked to find him with his head in a dancer's chest. Thinking he's passed out, Buddy rushes up to the stage to get him, but instead, he says to Buddy, "Can't you see I'm having the time of my life?"
  • An issue of Lobo combines this trope with Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever. He breaks up with a woman because she was too "flat", so she jumps into a vat of breast enlarging hormones that turns her into a Giant Woman, who exacts her revenge by smothering Lobo in her gargantuan cleavage.
  • In Turma da Mônica Jovem, Mônica does this to Cebolinha.
  • Astonishingly, Power Girl herself is nearly on the receiving end of one of these during a supervillain-induced hallucination.

    Comic Strips 

    Film — Animation 
  • In the film An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, there's one scene in particular where this trope occurred. As soon as Fievel enters into the saloon, he proceeds to nab a fork and plunge it into the... *ahem* hindquarters... of Cat R. Waul, causing him to jump several feet in the air, right through the roof above him (which was in turn the floor of the human saloon above them). As soon as he emerges, he is quickly grabbed by a rather affectionate woman who proceeds to put him through a Marshmallow Hell before he barely manages to escape and descend back into the saloon. The whole procedure is repeated at the end once more, though he suffers from Marshmallow Hell only shortly before being stuck into a toddler outfit.
  • In The Black Cauldron, young would-be warrior Taran, Princess Eilonwy, and minstrel Fflewddur Fflam travel to Morva, trying to get the title cauldron before the movie's Big Bad, the Horned King, can get his hands on it. Orwen, the heaviest and most voluptuous of the three witches guarding the cauldron, develops a crush on Fflewddur, and at one point, proceeds to bury the horrified, skinny man right between her breasts. Orgoch, tired of this lovey-dovey display, turns him into a frog in preparation for eating him... and the frog-Fflewddur gets completely smothered in the cleavage, desperately trying to wade his way out of there for several seconds of screentime. And that's just one of the two reasons why this is the first fully-animated Disney movie to ever get the PG rating...
  • At the end of Castle in the Sky, Ma Dola catches Sheeta in a big hug to comfort her over the loss of her pigtails. Sheeta's more upset about getting poked in the eye by stolen jewelry (in Victoria's Secret Compartment) than she is about getting smothered in a middle-aged woman's bosom.
  • Happens twice to Miguel in Coco. In the living world, Abuelita Elena subjects in to it. In the Land of the Dead, it's Tia Rosita.
  • Disney had actually used this long before: in Education for Death, Adolf Hitler gets a taste of Princess Germany's Marshmallow Hell.
  • In The Last Unicorn, Schmendrick gets this treatment from the tree he's tied to after his magic makes it decidedly more anthropomorphic.
    Schmendrick: Oh, God, I'm engaged to a Douglas Fir!
  • In Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (a children's movie musical which was, nevertheless, made in Japan), Nemo gets smushed between a dance instructor's enormous breasts several times ("Not again!") during a sequence about learning to be a prince.
  • In Wicked City, Giuseppe, the resident Dirty Old Man is fond of women, and he received one from a High-Class Call Girl. Turn out the hell part is literal as the call girl is a demon trying to kill him by absorbing him to her marshmallow body. If not for Makie, it would've costed Giuseppe's life.

    LARP 
  • This sometimes is used as a tactic by female players in Humans vs. Zombies in order to either score a silent infection against a human or in order to silently kill a zombie.

    Literature 
  • The Beginning After the End:
    • Happens to Arthur thrice, all courtesy of Angela Rose (bordering on And Call Him "George" territory). The first time is when he first meets the Twin Horns as a boy as part of her Establishing Character Moment (only being stopped by Durden taking him away from her). The second time is when he sees the Twin Horns again a few years later after reuniting with his family (again having to be stopped by Durden). The third time is when he returns from Elenoir after his Class Trip to Widow's Crypt (much to his Love Interest Tessia's chagrin as she's right next to him when it happens again, and afterwards Angela promptly does the same to her as well).
    • In the Lances' Establishing Character Moments in the novel (a sequence that was Adapted Out in the webcomic in favor of naming all of them at the announcement of the Council), Mica Earthborn (a dwarf with a rather childish appearance and demeanor) is on the receiving end of this courtesy of her fellow Lance Aya Grephin.
  • Chakona Space: During a Food Fight, Captain Foster tries to perform a tickle attack against one of his female Rakshani marines. She's smart enough to knock his arms out from under him, plunging his face between her chocolate cream pie coated breasts.
    Neal: "What a way to go."
  • This happens in the novel Cold Mountain when Inman and Veasey are staying with a man and his several wives and offspring. One of the women, named Lila, does this to him because she wants to have sex with him. Fortunately, although they are (involuntarily, in Inman's case) married, it doesn't happen.
  • Discworld:
    • Parodied in Wyrd Sisters. After the fool is stabbed... with a fake stage knife, he ends up in Magrat's bosom, such that it is. There was some interesting dialog as they end up actually arguing about whether or not he's dead since, on the one hand, he thinks he's in heaven because there's boobs in his face, and on the other hand, dead people don't need to breathe.
    • Implied to have occurred in Guards! Guards! with Sybil and the young man who's temporarily king of Ankh-Morpork. She's quite tall and curvy, so this is probably something she often has to be careful about.
      She'd even danced with the, for want of a better word, new king, who had said some polite words to her although they had been rather muffled.
  • Flashman: Flashman in the Great Game. This happens to Flashman after he's rescued from torture by an Indian queen. Unfortunately for the permanently-randy Anti-Hero, his hands are tied.
  • In one of the Leo Kessler novels, Sgt Schulze is talking to a Big Beautiful Woman when a shell goes off nearby, and his fellow soldiers look on in envy as he faceplants into her bosom.
  • Older Than Television: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James ends with the governess smothering her ward to death in her bosom in order to protect him from ghosts.
  • In the Xanth novel A Spell For Chameleon, Bink is rescued from an angry centaur by said centaur's girlfriend, who pulls Bink close to protect him, pillowing his head on something. When Bink turns around, he's face-to-not-quite-face with those "pillows."

    Manhwa 

    Music 
  • The Tom Smith song "Death by Wubbie", which originally had a slightly different name.

    Print Media 
  • Conversed in an interview with a CSI guy in German mag "Spiegel" (? - or was it "Stern"). They asked him what would be the perfect murder, and he came up with this trope. When he even said that they did an experiment and it worked (they had to stop after twenty seconds), you start wondering if it all was made up just for titillation of the reader.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Professional Wrestler Jillian Hall has more done this a few times against mostly female opponents to humiliate, disgust and or attempt to smother them. One memorable time was in mocking Ashley Massaro, who was revealed to be on the cover of an up coming Playboy magazine. This actually doesn't always get a positive reaction from the fans in attendance, as Jillian has a habit of making the audience hate her. Though this is more for the fact that she could kill several small children with her voice.
  • Slightly more literal in Lucy Furr's case, as she had a Fallen Angel gimmick. She actually made T.H.A.I. pass out to it.
  • Male examples with CZW alum Greg Excellent and the rotund Jester in the Keystone State Wrestling Alliance.
  • Minka is best known (insofar as pro wrestling goes) as one of the porn stars who defeated The Outsiders (Scott Hall and Kevin Nash) in a joke/troll match on the October 25, 1999 WCW Monday Nitro that was later inducted into WrestleCrap.note . It was not, however, her pro wrestling debut. She dabbled in valeting and wrestling back around the turn of the century under the name Satin. Her finisher was a "chest-smothering reverse sleeper". While valeting she'd also do it to wrestlers who ended up with their head on the ring apron.
  • At AIW The End of the World, December 21, 2012, AIW Women's Champion Allysin Kay defended the title against male wrestler Kobald. She actually gave him this at one point. The distinct height difference helped.
  • ODB faced Taeler Hendrix in a dark (non-televised) Women of Honor match before the taping for the December 19, 2015 (taped November 20th) episode of Ring of Honor. At one point, ODB attempted to counter Taeler's manager Truth Martini's attempt at interfering by giving him this. He came up smiling, which ODB found creepy.note 

    Religion 
  • American cult leader David Berg claimed to have been attacked by an Australian Aboriginal demon called the “Hong Kong Goolagong”, which attempted to smother him with disembodied female breasts. While Berg was coughing, the demon allegedly revealed its name to him in the form of “words shaped like nipples”. Other members of the cult chronicled the incident in a publication featuring concept art which has to be seen in order to be believed.
  • Poetically implied in the Song of Songs 1:13:
    A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts. (King James Version)

    Theatre 
  • In Spamalot, the Lady of the Lake, usually played by a Big Beautiful Woman, does this to Galahad in their shared introductory song, right before taking him off-stage and making him a man.
  • In Urinetown, when Hope and Bobby first met, Hope teaches Bobby how to listen to his heart. She first listens to his heart, then shoves his head into her chest so he can listen to her heart.

    Visual Novels 
  • The Beach Episode of A Bridge to the Starry Skies has Daigo imagining Tsumugi doing this to Ayumu.
  • You does this to Kid in Ever17, although it is only mentioned in the text and doesn't have an accompanying visual.
  • In Majikoi! Love Me Seriously!, Momoyo sometimes subjects Yamato to this.
  • Kurugaya does this to Kud in Little Busters!, causing the poor girl to quickly grow dizzy from lack of air and Kurugaya to hurriedly adjust her, commenting that hugging her from a 45-degree angle is the best.
  • This happens quite a bit in My Harem Heaven is Yandere Hell to Yuuya.
  • If you have Mila pick kindly and empathetic choices in The Pirate's Fate; she not only becomes very fat but becomes very fond of hugging others, making this trope inevitable given her much larger breasts. Justified since Mila’s larger mass and bust allows for warmer, softer, and more comforting hugs.
  • Played With and implied in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: In Chapter 3, Hajime wakes up to find that Mikan has fallen asleep on top of him, cradling his head dangerously close to her chest. When she wakes up, the two of them are both thoroughly embarrassed that it happened…twice. The second time this happens ends up being a pivotal piece of evidence that leads to Mikan being exposed as the murderer of Ibuki and Hiyoko, as Hajime remembering her elevated body temperature allows the class to correctly deduce that she has been infected with the Despair Disease (of which one of the symptoms is a fever).
    • The manga adaptation of the game plays it straight, as the change in medium allows them to depict things in a larger number of panels as opposed to a singular image. In the expanded scene, the more Hajime tries to squirm out of Mikan’s grasp, the closer she cuddles him (as she’s so deep asleep she thinks it’s part of the dream she’s having) until direct contact is inevitably made.

    Web Original 


Alternative Title(s): Boob Muffler, Marshmallow Heaven

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Cremia hugs Link

As a reward of delivering milk, Cremia picks up young Link for a hug.

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