Crazy Frog
The Crazy Frog is a 3D animated creature, featured on music albums.
History
[change | change source]Before becoming a ringtone to download onto mobile phones, The Crazy Frog started as a TruboForce 3D animated creature. It was called “The Annoying Thing” in 2003 by its creator, Erik Wernquist of Sweden. With big eyes and a bigger mouth, the high resolution anthropomorphic “thing” is dappled grey-blue and nude save for a helmet, goggles and biker vest. All original videos and images also show small male humanoid genital in a relaxed state that move realistically. Some sources pixel out or remove the genitals.
Music remixes
[change | change source]Members of Bass Bumpers had a dance remix of Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” in early-2005, the Beverly Hills Cop theme, adding Daniel Malmedahl’s impression of a moped engine (Ring-a-ding-dong) and a Max Headroom, “What’s going on?” (among other dubbed words). In the music video for that remix the “Thing” says featured bites from Daniel’s bit (Ding, ding.) and zooms around on a mimed bike to escape a robot minion on a hover bike.
The internet and media dubbed it both a Frog and crazy. Erik went along with it.
First, it was simply a vocal imitation of a two stroke, internal combustion engine. Daniel Malmedahl of Sweden created a recording of his imitation in 1997 that eventually spread through peer to peer file sharing on the Internet.
Sales and revenue
[change | change source]The company that sells Crazy Frog ringtones (Jamba!) has made £14 million from it.