YMMV / The Family Circus

• Can't Un-Hear It: After learning that the real Thelma Keane was born and raised in Australia, it's fascinating to reread the old strips and imagine Thel speaking in a Queensland accent.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In the Christmas special, Billy outright telling Jeffy that their grandfather can't celebrate Christmas with them because he's dead.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The character of "Not Me" is this if you've seen Paranoia Agent, since Lil' Slugger is basically a Darker and Edgier version of him.
• Periphery Hatedom: The strip has received a disproportionate amount of mockery over the years from people not in its kids-say-the-darndest-things-isn't-it-cute? demographic (though of course this could be more an expression of just wanting to poke fun at things than obsessive hatred).
• So Bad, It's Good: The general consensus among the comic strip community.
• Sweetness Aversion: Quite possibly the biggest example in comics, with the family portrayed as so old-timey and wholesome that it has zero edge for a lot of viewers to attach to, not to mention how many of the punchlines involve cutesy thoughts the child characters say.
• Tear Jerker: Even the online comics snark community found the tribute to Thel Keane to be rather touching.
• Values Dissonance:
  • A lot of the humor in parodies like Dysfunctional Family Circus comes from the fact that the original strips can often be read as promoting traditionalist values to the point of being retrograde. For example, this◊ strip's meaning is (presumably) that the two statements are one and the same.
  • In the earliest strips, Bil and Thel sometimes used Corporal Punishment on the kids, since it was still widely accepted at the time.

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