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2003·Early web, before YouTube

Crazy Frog

A Swedish teenager imitating a two-stroke engine, sold as a ringtone to the entire world.

You might remember it as Axel F, Ringding, The Annoying Thing

A trend people joined in with

The story

What this was

Erik Wernquist's animation set to Daniel Malmedahl's mouth-made engine noise, spread as a ringtone and a video until it outsold Coldplay. One of the first cases of an internet joke becoming a mainstream commercial product.

It first appeared in 2003, during early web, before YouTube.

The same internet

Early web, before YouTube

More like this

Related

Nothing related yet. Relationships are recorded where evidence supports them, not inferred from similarity.

Behind the record

Where it came from

There is no original to identify: this spread through many separate posts at once rather than from a first one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is the record.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this, because research established there was not one — it appeared in many places at once.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

What happens
Erik Wernquist's animation set to Daniel Malmedahl's mouth-made engine noise, spread as a ringtone and a video until it outsold Coldplay. One of the first cases of an internet joke becoming a mainstream commercial product.
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