The Annoying Legacy of the Annoying Thing
16 years after its debut, Crazy Frog videos have collectively garnered billions of views. But where – if at all – does this creature fit into the online ecosystem of today?
Recently, I stumbled upon an intriguing, unexpected investment opportunity. It didn’t catch my attention because of conjured fantasies of riches beyond my imagination – although I’m no fintech expert, the operation from my limited perspective seems to be some sort of poorly cobbled together Ponzi scheme. Rather, the absolutely bizarre driving concept was what got the cogs in my head moving.
I’m talking, of course, about Crazy Frog Coin. On August 25th, this altcoin (as in, an alternate to Bitcoin) officially launched on PancakeSwap, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. Also offered on the official website are Crazy Frog NFTs, a portion of profits from which will allegedly go toward preserving amphibian and reptile habitats. Just how much will make its way to this noble cause is unclear, although the FAQ section of the website offered the following reassuring statement:
Unsurprisingly, the closest thing we have to a legitimate authority on Crazy Frog (the unverified yet relatively popular @TrueCrazyFrog Twitter account) has publicly denounced CFC as a scam. But determining whether this endeavor is or isn’t a scam isn’t my intent. I don’t know or care enough about cryptocurrency to dissect all of the reasons why CFC may or may not be legit. I don’t even care to spend much time examining the irony behind CFC’s supposed desire to preserve vulnerable wildlife with profits generated from notoriously environmentally-unfriendly blockchain technology.
Rather, it has been difficult for me to comprehend why Crazy Frog, specifically, was dug up among all of the skeletons of the early aughts to peddle this questionable crypto. So, I began to dig.
A few days ago, I called up my good friend Colleen at around 10pm EST. “Do you remember the Crazy Frog?” I asked with bated breath. The name didn’t ring a bell initially. Once I showed her the infamous Axel F Remix video, in which the strange creature rides an invisible motorbike through a nameless dystopian metropolis as a killbot hellbent on assassinating the frog gives chase, the memories came flooding back.
We spent several minutes reminiscing on those early internet days before Youtube, when you had to wait 3-5 labored minutes for the family computer on a dial-up connection to load your favorite flash videos. Colleen then called to her husband, James, to ask if he too remembered the Crazy Frog.
She had hardly finished forming the last syllable of the sentence when James responded with definitive, slightly exasperated yes. He explained that, although he couldn’t recall exactly what the hubbub was about, he clearly remembered the vitrol the animated character inspired in adults.
To some – specifically, Americans – it may come as a shock to hear that the Crazy Frog was ever more than the irritating protagonist of a long-forgotten trending clip. But James, who was situated in the English port town of Folkestone at the peak of Crazy Frog mania, remembers the narrative a bit differently. Stepping back and looking at the Frog’s broader international appeal, the horrifying truth becomes evident. The Axel F Remix many of us buried a decade ago is merely the tip of an ultra-annoying iceberg.
At some point in 1997, an unsuspecting Swedish teenager by the name of Daniel Malmedahl sowed the first seeds of chaos. For whatever reason, the 17 year old boy made the conscious decision to record himself imitating the sound of the two-stroke engine on his motorbike. He posted the result to his personal website, dubbing the soon-to-be-cursed sound file “2TAKTARE.MP3”.
Some time later, a friend emailed the sound file to Erik Wernquist, a young animator also based in Sweden. Guided by an auditory muse consisting of bings and dings, a creature capable of making the sound – simply dubbed “The Annoying Thing” – was born. Before long, the initial 3D animation made the rounds online primarily through word of mouth.
Curiously enough, Wernquist claims in a 2005 BBC interview that the entity we now know as Crazy Frog is not actually a frog at all. But when ringtone marketer Jamba (also known as Jamster) got in touch with Wernquist and Malmedahl looking to capitalize on the Annoying Thing’s success, the Crazy Frog moniker was deemed to be more profitable.
Instantaneously, the earworm (and the character attached) went viral. Jamba spent millions of dollars on advertising slots pedaling their services across a spectrum of channels. The Frog demanded attention the moment it reached people’s televisions.
Almost as soon as it was unleashed upon the masses, problems arose. Specifically, the UK harbored a special hatred for the character. In fairness, the contempt was well deserved, as Jamba played the advert thousands of times per day. Often it would play multiple times within a single ad break. To truly grasp how maddening that must have been, take 30 seconds to view the following archived Jamba advertisement:
Prudish viewers naturally complained to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority concerning the Frog’s visible genetalia. However, within the course of a few months, the majority of complaints focused on the sheer volume of Frog advertisements. Perhaps most problematic of all was Jamba’s business model. Many of the viewers that fell for the Crazy Frog’s allure handed over their credit card information under the impression that they were making a one-off ringtone purchase. Instead, hapless customers discovered the hard way that they were actually paying for subscriptions that were made intentionally difficult to cancel.
The power Crazy Frog had accrued would only multiply. Things came to a crescendo in May 2005 when two Berlin-based DJs divided Malmedahl’s original recording into bite-sized pieces, went through “two bottles of vodka”, and mixed the resulting samples with the Axel Foley instrumental theme, courtesy of the 1984 film Beverly Hills Cop. Overnight, the Axel F remix and accompanying music video garnered unprescedented popularity. Despite being a musical number created with the express purpose of selling novelty ringtones, the song topped the singles charts in multiple countries across Europe. Before the end of the month, it outpaced established mainstream artists like Coldplay, Oasis, and U2.
As time went on, it seemed that everyone wanted to profit off of the inexplicable trend. The Playstation 2 released the nearly universally panned Crazy Frog Racer, and multiple production companies were in talks concerning a potential Crazy Frog TV series or feature film. An individual dressed as the Crazy Frog (sans scrotum, of course) toured around Australian shopping malls and children’s hospitals.
For a brief window of time, the wild-eyed weirdo seemed to be an unstoppable force.
So what finally catapulted the strange, undeniably annoying thing into obscurity?
Unfortunately, the demise of Crazy Frog is rather anti-climactic. There isn’t any epic fall from grace to report. Instead, the once polarizing character simply faded away. Fresher memes awaited the brave soldiers traversing the early aughts internet. The capitalistic greed that stuffed Crazy Frog into our heads and hearts eventually suffocated the fragile creature. He became boring.
After years of inactivity, some affecionatos lingering online suspected the Frog’s canonical death following a series of tweets implying that the character had contracted the H1N1 Swine Flu, followed by a decade of complete silence.
Even when a seemingly legitimate new Crazy Frog account (referenced earlier) emerged in April 2020, its fate was still somewhat unclear. A disturbing image of the character hanging from a noose was posted, then deleted from the account. This further fueled rumors that Crazy Frog had kicked the bucket.
Few mourned the supposed loss. Even Wernquist expressed remorse concerning his creation in a 2017 document with the following statement:
You can call it a fear of Crazy Frog sort of remaining my impact on the world…I was asked once by a reporter if I wanted it to say “Crazy Frog” on my tombstone. Of course I do not. But as of now, I guess, that’s what it is going to say if I die tomorrow…but I hope that will change.
Unfortunately for the father of Crazy Frog, his brainchild persists. After viewing a crude animation (since deleted) presumably made by the makers of Crazy Frog Coin, I took a look at the crypto’s official Instagram (which seems to have been removed from the platform at the time of this publication). There, I found the closest thing to an answer as to why the Crazy Frog was ressurected hiding in an image caption:
With Crazy Frog’s popular reputation, it makes excellent sense to bring it back in 2021, enticing people’s mood after last two awful years. The coin’s sole marketing focus is to bring positive vibe into Binance Smart Chain network and the client also will be modernising the character into the current 2021 version.
Though Jamba’s grift has long fallen to the wayside, it seems the unbreakable will of the Crazy Frog has allowed him to hop to a new grift, tailor-made for a new decade. While many have forgotten the former viral sensation, it’s clear that there are still some that believe in the character’s ability to push products. Perhaps as long as there is room for cons, scams, and shell games, there will always be space for this strange beast to survive.