The 90s was a peculiar time, with fashion, culture and tech from the era bringing back a sense of nostalgia for many of us. And then there’s Clippy, the annoying virtual assistant that Microsoft included with every installation of Microsoft Office 97.
While the infamous character has since been removed when Office 2007 launched, it’s since become a meme of sorts for Microsoft. They had brought him back for quite literally just a couple of days in 2019, when it appeared as a sticker pack on Microsoft Teams, before quickly being removed after Microsoft’s internal ‘brand police’ disapproved of it. It’s likely that they’ve since softened their stance though, as earlier this year Microsoft tweeted that they’ll replace the paperclip emoji in Microsoft 365 with Clippy.
Microsoft has since included Clippy as the paperclip emoji in Windows 11’s 3D emojis, but it seems as though we’re getting even more Clippy too. On the Microsoft Teams feedback portal, an official Microsoft response towards a request for the sticker pack confirms that they’ve brought him back via a Retro Sticker Pack in their chat platform. If you still can’t get enough of Clippy though, you can even have him in your next Microsoft Teams video call—kinda. Clippy is now one of the options for your background when you’re in a Teams meeting, so feel free to bring him in and annoy your colleagues there too.
Love him or loathe him, it’s clear that Clippy has become more than just a relic of the past for Microsoft and their userbase, and so it’s perhaps nice to see that they’ve since acknowledged people wanting him back, even if it’s just as a sticker.
