The Ants (Happy Tree Friends)

The Ants are a family of ants from Happy Tree Friends who serve as recurring characters throughout the series. There is a mother ant, a baby ant, a son, and a daughter. They live an anthill with a door at the top. Sniffles is their enemy, as he tries to eat them in every episode they appear. The Ants get revenge by torturing and killing him in the most sadistic ways possible.

Why They Suck

 * 1) They are incredibly sadistic and cruel towards Sniffles.
 * 2) Unlike other famous cartoon rivalries like Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Sylvester and Tweety, The Ant and the Aardvark, and of course Tom and Jerry (despite both of them being the protagonists while not being a predator/prey relationship, / frenemies) where the protagonists conflict harm on their rivals in more cartoony and harmless ways that doesn’t really kill them, they conflict harm on Sniffles in very sadistic and torturous ways that actually kill him, one of the most notorious examples is in Tongue in Cheek.
 * 3) *There spite for Sniffles basically happens to be in the same same way as the rivalry between Itchy and Scratchy, who actually hate each other, with Scratchy always (except once) dying in brutal ways. Despite him having brutal deaths, there is less gore, as The Simpsons is intended for younger audiences, around ages 8-10 and up.
 * 4) Their voices are incredibly annoying to listen to.
 * 5) At the beginning of Suck It Up, one of them steals Sniffles' cookies and offers a sick Sniffles a cookie just to yank it away and blow a raspberry at him.
 * 6) At the end of Tongue in Cheek, they use Sniffles' corpse as a house.
 * 7) Unlike the rest of the Happy Tree Friends cast, they never have any deaths and usually get off scot-free, making them Karma Houdinis.
 * 8) They refuse to accept the fact anteaters are supposed to eat ants, which proves they have no care for predators.
 * 9) Due to their designs, it is a little hard to tell if they are even ants at all.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Sniffles' death in Suck It Up can actually be considered funny.
 * 2) They have stopped making appearances after Tongue in Cheek due to their negative reception.
 * 3) They have a good reason to hate Sniffles whenever he starts a conflict against them.
 * 4) *This could be justified since Blast from the Past since Prehistoric Sniffles ate an ant who used to be friends with him, meaning that Sniffles and the Ants started a rivalry.
 * 5) They weren't trying to kill Sniffles in a Hard Act To Swallow. His death was simply a side effect of trying to rescue the baby ant from his stomach.

Reception
The Ants are heavily panned by fans due to horrible treatment to Sniffles. Some may consider them to be the worst characters of Happy Tree Friends. due to the backlash of Tongue in Cheek, they were removed from the show to avoid any more negative reception.