Minions are everywhere. Children dress like them for Halloween, coworkers email them in memes, and your mom just keeps insisting that your Uncle Bob looks like one. So, you either love them or you hate them; there really isn’t a happy medium when it comes to Minions.

However, whether you love them (bello? how can you not?) or wish they’d fallen in the volcano with the T-Rex, everyone can admit that Minions have staying power.

But what is it exactly about Minions that makes them so irresistible? You either love them or you hate them, but you definitely feel strongly either way. Let’s head down to Gru’s lair and investigate why we love (or love to hate) Despicable Me’s Minions so much.

1) They Are Everyone

Minions have no gender, no race, no language, and no country of origin. They literally emerged from the sea after the Big Bang and they’ve been struggling to find their place ever since.

Like their language, Minionese — which has bits and pieces of several languages — they are a hodgepodge of everyone. By saying nothing and being from everywhere, they are whatever people want or need them to be at the time. That makes them universal!

2) They’re Just Like Us

Like us, Minions hate Mondays, they get hangry, and they enjoy sassy one-liners (at least that’s what memes have led us to believe). In all honesty though, there is more to Minions than just funny internet memes; we can’t help but identify with their struggles and aspirations. In the end, all they really want is to be loved. In fact, they’ve been searching for the most despicable villain to serve their whole lives! They make a lot of mistakes (they still feel bad about that whole T-Rex in the volcano thing...) but they just want to be helpful and find a purpose in life.

Ultimately, they want to find someone (even if it is a villain) who appreciates and loves them — and also maybe gives them bedtime kisses.

3) Babababa-banana

They’re obsessed with bananas. If you’re also obsessed with bananas, then you’ve found a kindred spirit. If you hate bananas, then Minions represent everything that is evil and terrible in the world to you. It is as simple as that.

So, if you’re a parent and you desperately want your kid to eat healthier snacks, Minions are your lifesaver!

4) You Love to Hate Them

Even if you hate Minions, there is a level of enjoyment in mocking them. Sometimes it can be hard to tell if a meme is pro-Minion or anti-Minion because those yellow henchmen are pretty darn ambiguous and enigmatic sometimes.

So, whether you are ironically mocking a Minion or just genuinely tickled by the yellow henchmen, you’re still pretty obsessed. You either love them or you love to hate them.

5) Costume-Worthy

Minions are recognizable. It doesn’t matter if you dress your dog as a Minion or you just accidentally wore a yellow shirt and blue overalls in public, but the chances are that people will instantly identify your fashion statement as Minion-related. The bright yellow faces, googly eyes (or eye), and blue overalls will always scream Minion to the world.

Whether you’re dressing the fire hydrant in front of your house as a Minion for Halloween, or you’re just pretending not to know your mother on social media because she speaks only in Minion memes...chances are that Minions are still a major part of your life. Get your Minion fix today with a Fifth Sun Despicable Me and Minion shirt today!