Dancing Banana

The Dancing Banana (also known as Peanut Butter Jelly, or Humba the Banana) is a popular emoticon originally created by Trym Stene (Tierra), just as a fun animated .gif avatar for a Norwegian discussion forum Norsk FreakForum where it was used as an emoticon for the first time. By late 2001, the banana was already being used on several forums as a standard emoticon. Most of these forums would replace the typed text ":banana:" with the graphical image. As the popularity of the banana grew, hundreds of variations of the image had been created for forums or other purposes. These new images typically would have to be either uploaded or linked to, instead of replacing text. There is also a dancing pickle, muffin, carrot, apple, onion, taco, broccoli, Sonic the Hedgehog, Yoshi, Mario, Luigi, Mega Man, Link, and Coach Z, among many others. The dancing banana emoticon is very famous amongst users of Amiga computer and there has been realized also an Amiga Boingball Logo dancing version of the banana emoticon. The Dancing Banana soon made its way to television shows and began to appear as an icon in pop culture.
Peanut Butter Jelly Time
"Peanut Butter Jelly Time" was a Flash animation created by Ryan Gancenia Etrata and Kevin Flynn posted onto the Offtopic.com forums in early 2002. On March 21, 2002, a user by the name YrebWarts posted Etrata and Flynn’s work on Newgrounds.com where the clip became wildly popular spawning a number of remakes, and became an Internet phenomenon. Based upon a song of the same name recorded by DJ Chipman of the Buckwheat Boyz, the best known version of the animation (usually distributed as a Flash clip) shows a highly pixelated animated Dancing Banana moving back and forth to the song's repetitive chorus. In some versions of the animation, the song's lyrics are displayed on screen. The line "peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat" is copied from The Ramones "Beat on the Brat" (with a baseball bat); although, in the Peanut butter jelly instance, it doesn't rhyme (or make sense)."
Appearances in popular culture
* In the Family Guy episode "The Courtship of Stewie's Father", Brian attempts to cheer Peter up by performing "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" dressed as the Dancing Banana.
* The University of Georgia Diamond Dawgs use the Family Guy clip of "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" during late-game pitching changes.
* In the Ed episode "The Wedding", Jennifer Bradley shows Ed the "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" animation to try to cheer him up.
* Alex Shelley is occasionally represented by crowd chants or crowd signs that read "Peanut Butter Shelley Time" as a play on both his name and the meme.
* In one episode of The Proud Family, Penny babysits Dijonay's brothers and sisters. The kids put in a CD and start dancing to "Peanut Butter Jelly Time".
* Hot Topic sells shirts of the banana with the phrase "It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time".
* In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy video game, an unlockable costume for Irwin is a banana suit. Whenever Irwin does his "Mojo Meltdown" in the banana suit, he assumes a pose mimicking the Dancing Banana's dance.
* On the January 31, 2007 episode of American Idol, contestant Sophat Peou sang the song while wearing a banana suit and doing the dance. He was disqualified less than 10 seconds later.
* On Nickelodeon, Peanut Butter Jelly Time was used as a short piece of their commercial to encourage children to eat breakfast.
* The Tampa Bay Rays feature the theme song and a dancing banana
* The Banana and phrase "It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time" appears in Weezer's music video "Pork and Beans".
* The song is a running gag on TNT's Inside the NBA, with a video of Charles Barkley's head superimposed over a shirtless overweight man dancing.
* During Cyber Sunday pay-per-view event, WWE Diva Victoria dressed up as the character. She also dressed as a banana on the Halloween Special of Smackdown!.
* The dance motion of the Dancing Banana is used in the popular PC game World of Warcraft as one of the few dancing moves a male tauren can do.
* The dance motion is also included in the online fighting game Rumble Fighter and is activated by typing /pbj.
* Randy Moller, radio play-by-play commentator for the NHL's Florida Panthers, frequently uses the phrase "Peanut Butter Jelly Time!" to celebrate a Panthers' goal.
* "Peanut Butter Burrows Time!" is a common saying among fans of the Vancouver Canucks while anticipating a goal by Alexandre Burrows.
* The Dancing Banana has been created as a character for the fighting game engine, MUGEN.
* The theme song for newly animated show Watchmen is the song that The Dancing Banana dances too.

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See Also

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