About
The Annoying Thing, more widely known as Crazy Frog, is a 3D-animated character from a commercial for ringtone provider Jamba!, later known as Jamster. The character went viral when paired with an electronic cover of “Axel F” from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack.
Origin
In 1997, Swedish student Daniel Malmedahl recorded himself imitating noises made by a two-stroke engine.[1] After he posted this on an unknown website, it grabbed the attention of a Swedish television researcher, who invited Malmedahl to perform the engine noises on television.
Spread
Te noises from the TV performance been appeared in various file sharing websites renamed to 2TAKTARE.mp3. The sound has been then adopted to a single serving site called “The Insanity Test” showing a formula one racing car and the rules:
1. Turn on the Speakers and allow the page to load fully
2. Stare at the Picture without laughing for 60 seconds
3. If you start laughing consider yourself legally insane
In 2003, Swedish animator Erik Wernquist created a 3D animation using the LightWave 3D modeling application. The animation is called “The Annoying Thing,” which was the initial name of the frog. The animation was then posted on TurboForce3D.com by him and the animation was download-able as an .avi and an .mpg video file (shown below, left). The background song is called “In Rock 8 Bit” produced by “Bodenständig 2000” (shown below, right).
In 2004 “Jamba!” used this as a ringtone to show this in a commercial and renamed the audio in “The Crazy Frog.” In an interview with Wernquist, he expressed his displeasure at the choice of the name by saying, that it isn’t a frog and is not considered to be crazy.
“Axel F” Cover
In 2005, dance music projects Bass Bumpers and Off-Cast Project created a cover song of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” using the Crazy Frog vocals. The song was released as a single titled “Crazy Frog – Axel F.” The same year, the Swedish 3D animation company Kaktus Film and Wernquist made a music video for the song with the title “Axel F” (shown below). It was uploaded to the CrazyFrogVEVO channel on June 16th, 2009. In February of 2018, that video surpassed 1 billion views on YouTube. The track debuted at Number 1 in the UK, where it stayed for four weeks. The success of the track led to three Crazy Frog albums: Crazy Hits (2005), More Crazy Hits (2006) and Everybody Dance Now (2009).
Other Media
In December 2005, Digital Jesters created a video game for Playstation 2 and PC called Crazy Frog Racer.
Crazy Frog Brothers
The Crazy Frog Brothers is a homemade video of two kids dancing around their basement and lip-syncing to the song “Axel F.”
Search Interest
External References
[1]Wikipedia – Crazy Frog