They're short, they're yellow, they're minions, and they are everywhere.

Our colleague Eric Schwarzel covers Hollywood, and lately he's been thinking a lot about

the minions, which first appeared in the 2010 hit Despicable Me.

He says their rise to mega-stardom happened almost by accident.

The minions were not the headline, they were not the center of the pitch.

No one was saying, you know, we're going to release this movie and oh by the way, there

are these little yellow supporting characters that everyone's going to latch on to and it's

going to give us this whole other avenue of revenue to exploit.

No one was saying that.

Now these little yellow supporting characters are almost impossible to escape.

There are minion toys and board games and school supplies.

There are Halloween costumes.

All the kinds of things that come with an animated franchise.

I think it's safe to say that the minions are the most popular children's franchise created

in recent history, but the difference with minions is that it's still only 12 years old.

That's the key here is that this has happened very quickly.

And lately the company behind the minions, illumination, has watched them go to another

level.

Beyond just movies and merchandise, like really beyond.

This is a more recent example, but there's a photo going around a missile in Ukraine.

You know, missiles are kind of minion shaped and the minions are yellow and they wear blue

overall.

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