The Dancing Banana is a popular emoticon that was created by Trym Stene (Tierra) in 1999, and uploaded first on the internet in 2001. It was initially used as a .gif on the Norweigian discussion forum Norsk FreakForum, where it was used as one of the website's emoticons.
What Makes Him an Ensemble Dark Horse?[]
- The mere obscurity of the site that the emoticon originated from guarantees its spot as an ensemble dark horse, as it overshadows even the site's existence in terms of popularity by a long shot.
- The Dancing Banana is best known for appearing the 2002 Flash Animation, "Peanut Butter Jelly Time", which depicted the emoticon dancing to the 2001 Buckwheat Boyz song Peanut Butter Jelly Time, created by Ryan Gancenia Etrata and Kevin Flynn, and originally posted to Offtopic.com in early 2002.
- When the flash animation was posted onto Newgrounds, it spawned a number of remakes and became a popular internet phenomenon, all of which include the dancing banana emoticon in some form. As a result of this, the Dancing Banana can be considered one of the oldest memes in internet history.
- Part of the appeal of the Dancing Banana came from how obnoxious the song he is often accompanied with was to some people, espescially since the animation played on loop, spawning an ironic fanbase of sorts.
- Though rarer than Peanut Butter Jelly Time, the Dancing Banana is also known for being associated with the memetic Raffi song Banana Phone, for obvious reasons.
Trivia[]
- The Dancing Banana was well-known for being featured on Family Guy, where Brian Griffin sang the song in a banana costume, making this the first time the meme left the Internet for TV for the first time.
- The Dancing Banana is also well-known for being the host of Shovelware's Brain Game, another instance where the emoticon was ascended.