Crazy Frog

The Crazy Frog is a 3D animated creature, featured on music albums.

Crazy Frog with its creators Daniel Malmedahl (left) and Erik Wernquist (right) at the Australian tour in 2005

History

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

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

The company that sells Crazy Frog ringtones (Jamba!) has made £14 million from it.