Honey Boo Boo Biography

Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson is the pint-sized blonde beauty pageant contestant who became the star of the TV reality series Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

Alana Thompson was six when she first appeared on the series Toddlers and Tiaras on the TLC network in early 2012. Drinking “go-go juice” (a mixture of Red Bull and Mountain Dew) and strutting around in spangled child pageant outfits, she caught the eye of both viewers and producers, who promptly gave her her own show.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo premiered on August 8, 2012. The show’s official site described it this way: “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo follows Alana and her family: stay-at-home mom June, chalk-mining dad Sugar Bear, and sisters 12-year-old Lauryn ‘Pumpkin,’ 15-year-old Jessica ‘Chubbs,’ and 17-year-old Anna ‘Chickadee.'”

The show was set in the family’s hometown of McIntyre, Georgia, and subtitles were used to make the family’s words clear.  Honey Boo Boo’s obese mother June became the show’s co-star along with her daughter, and the show featured the self-described “redneck” family saying things like “It’s been a while since I done had road kill in my belly.”

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo was an immediate hit, although critics weren’t so impressed: The Onion A/V Club, for one, called the show a “train wreck,” a “dire warning to the world at large” and a “horror story posing as a reality television program.” The show ran for four seasons, from 2012-2014.