The Gingerbread Man remains a common subject for American children's literature into the 21st century. The retellings often omit the original ending ("I am quarter gone… I am half gone… I am three-quarters gone… I am all gone!")[1] and make other changes. In some variations, the fox feigns deafness, drawing the Gingerbread Man closer and closer. Then the fox snatches and devours him. In other versions, the Gingerbread Man halts in his flight at a riverbank, and after accepting the fox's offer to ferry him across, is convinced by the fox to move ever-forward toward the fox's mouth.
In some retellings, the Gingerbread Man taunts his pursuers with the famous line:
Run, run as fast as you can!
You can't catch me.
I'm the Gingerbread Man!
The character of the runaway food exists in folktales. Folklorist D. L. Ashliman located it across Germany, the British Isles, and Eastern Europe, as well as the United States.[4] Jack Haney also located it in Slavdom and in Northern Europe.[5]
"The Pancake"[4] ("Pannekaken") was collected by Peter Asbjornsen and Jørgen Moe and published in Norske Folkeeventyr (1842-1844), and, ten years later, the German brothers Carl and Theodor Colshorn collected "The Big, Fat Pancake"[4] ("Vom dicken fetten Pfannekuchen") from the Salzdahlum region and published the tale in Märchen und Sagen, no. 57, (1854). In 1894, Karl Gander collected "The Runaway Pancake"[4] The Roule Galette story is a similar story from France.
A similar Russian tale is called "Kolobok" ("Колобок"). It’s about a round bread running away from an old lady and old man to face different forest animals such as a hare, wolf, and bear, which it is able to avoid, while singing a repetitive song. At the end it meets a fox who tricks it and eats it.
A variation of this trope is found in the Hungarian tale "The Little Dumpling" ("A kis gömböc"), and contrary to the title the main character is not a dumpling, but the Hungarian version of head cheese (which is referred to as "gömböc" - "dumpling" - in some regions of Hungary). In the tale it is the gömböc that eats the others; it first consumes the family that "made" it, and then, rolling on the road, it eats various others – including a whole army – the last of whom is a swineherd. His knife opens the gömböc from the inside, and the people run home. In another variation the gömböc bursts after eating too many people. A similar Russian tale is called "The Clay-Boy" ("Глиняный парень", Glínyanyĭ párenʹ). In it, an old childless couple make themselves a clay-child, who first eats all their food, then them, then a number of people, until he meets a goat who offers to jump right into his mouth, but instead uses the opportunity to ram the Clay-Boy, shattering him and freeing everyone. The Czech folk tale Otesánek (and the 2000 movie with the same name) follows a similar plot.
Joseph Jacobs published "Johnny-Cake" in his English Fairy Tales (1890), basing his tale on a version found in the American Journal of Folk-Lore.[1] Jacobs' johnny-cake rolls rather than runs, and the fox tricks him by pretending to be deaf and unable to hear his taunting verse. In "The Wee Bannock" from More English Fairy Tales (1894), Jacobs records a Scottish tale with a bannock as hero.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gingerbread_Man