Chubby Chubby Chip Chip

About

“Chubby Chubby Chip Chip” is a chiptune song produced by English musician and video game composer Mark Knight, also known as “TDK” (The Dark Knight) or madfiddler, in 1992. Nearly two decades after its original release, the song resurged in popularity after it was adapted by the YouTube Poop Music Video community as a popular audio source in 2010.

Origin

The song was composed and produced in August 1992 by English demoscene artist Mark Knight^[1] on the Commodore Amiga personal computer with the freeware tracker program Protracker. As a game musician, Knight worked for PC game developers like 3D Realms and Electronic Arts and wrote original compositions for many console formats from the Nintendo Entertainment System through to the PlayStation and PC.

Knight left the demo music scene shortly afterwards in 1993 to pursue his career in video game composition, but the song was rediscovered many years later by YTPMV artist DWL1993, who paired Knight’s original chiptune song with Team Fortress 2 video footage and uploaded it onto YouTube on October 20th, 2010.

Spread

In the early 1990’s, the song “Chubby Chubby Chip Chip” was reportedly used in chiptune intros and demo tracks released by Melon Dezign and Anthrox, of which he was a member of the group. On April 24th, 2005, the song was uploaded onto Newgrounds^[4] by user DJFuzzy as a flash-based music video accompanied by a visualizer application. On September 8th, 2009, YouTuber Checkingokop uploaded a modified version of Knight’s original track, which was also accompanied by screensaver-like visualizations.

Aside from occasional reuploading of the original composition and remix versions on music-sharing sites like Soundcloud^[5] and Last.fm^[6], the song stayed mostly dormant throughout the rest of the decade. Years later, “Chubby Chubby Chip Chip” saw the light of YouTube again on October 20th, 2010, when YouTuber DWL1993 uploaded a YouTube Poop music video (YTPMVs) titled “RED Flash,” featuring footage from Team Fortress 2.

On the following day, DWL1993’s remix was shared on the Russian TF2 fan site TF2in.ru^[3], though follow-up responses from other artists in the YTPMV community didn’t arrive until April 2011. Several dozens of YouTube Poop remixes^[2] emerged in between May and August of that year, including “Bender Flash” featuring the Futurama character and DWL1993’s remake of his original “RED Flash.”

On January 27th, 2012, YouTuber AmazingFilms247 uploaded his YTPMV remix of the song, which gained more than 150,000 views in less than six months.

Since gaining a cult-like status in YouTube’s remix community, Knight has been working on an updated full synth version of “Chubby Chubby Chip Chip,” a preview of which can be found on his Soundcloud page.^[7]

At the end of 2012, Knight released his first full chiptune album with a new mix of “Chubby Chubby Chip Chip”. This can also be found on his Soundcloud page.^[8]

Notable Examples

The music videos are titled after the snowclone “X Flash,” in which X represents the name of characters featured in the footage. Some of the more notable instances combine other well-known YouTube video memes like Senor Chang’s “Ha, Gay!”, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, ASDFmovie and MysteryGuitarMan among others.