Fifa World Cup 2014: Readers poke fun at ‘Hungry Hippo’ Luis Suarez

Dubai: From the more obvious Dracula and Edward Cullen of Twilight, to the increasingly obtuse Hungry Hippos, the social media race is on for who can come up with the definitive meme of the Luis Suarez bite fiasco.

Images using the Apple logo and a clever attempt to market Big Bite vanilla ice cream are also among the slew of Suarez-related posts to appear since the Uruguay forward apparently sunk his teeth into Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini in a World Cup match on Tuesday night.

“3rd time.... Needs to see a shrink or go to Romania — obviously Dracula’s heritage,” read one comment on the Gulf News Facebook page, referencing the fact that Suarez has been banned for biting twice before.

One of the more popular images depicts an open-mouthed Suarez replacing each of the four heads of the Hungry Hippos in the popular children’s game. Another puts the Uruguayan’s face on the Twilight move poster featuring vampire heartthrob Cullen.

Pictures of Suarez celebrating Uruguay’s win at the end of the game have not done him any favours. One has been captioned: “If you can’t beat them… Eat them!”

Instagram was in on the action, too, satirising the Apple company logo. User antonellacongedi uploaded an image of the famous bitten-into apple with a statement under it saying ‘Suarez was here’.

#Suarez was trending on Twitter in the UAE, with users looking for their own mouthful of the action. @psull88 posted: “A stern warning about his future behaviour and a hefty fine surely sufficient action against #Suarez??”

Meanwhile, @thecoldend took a more serious view of the impact of Suarez’s actions, tweeting: “Isn’t it awful that #Suarez will dominate the headlines in a brilliant World Cup where some fantastic football has been played?”

HB Ice Cream is attempting to use the incident to boost sales, tweeting: “Wonder if Suarez has a favourite…”, and adding a link to a photo of their Big Bite vanilla flavour.

For football fans, the furore is nothing new — a similar hoard of Suarez bite-related humour hit the internet in 2013 when the same player was banned for 10 games for having a taste of Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic.

He was earlier given seven games on the sidelines for chewing on PSV Eindhoven’s Otman Bakkal while playing for Ajax in 2010.

Perhaps the former Ajax striker was simply looking for a bigger stage on which to bare his teeth.

— The writer is an intern with the Readers Desk of the newspaper