The Gingerbread Man (also known as The Gingerbread Boy or The Gingerbread Runner) is a fairy tale about a Gingerbread Man's escape from various pursuers and his eventual demise between the jaws of a fox. The story is variety of the class of folk tales about runaway food, which are classified in the Aarne-Thompson classification system of traditional folktales as AT 2025: The Fleeing Pancake. [1][2] A gingerbread boy as hero is a uniquely American contribution to the tale type.
