Peanut Butter Jelly Time
A pixelated banana, dancing. A frantic novelty song, repeating. Together they conquered the early-2000s internet through sheer absurdity, until someone in every room could yell "IT'S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!" and everyone else would groan on cue.
In 2001 the Buckwheat Boyz, a Miami novelty-bass act, released a hyperkinetic track called "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" that might have vanished without a trace. Then, in early 2002, animator Ryan Etrata posted a pixelated dancing-banana GIF to the OffTopic.com forums, someone set it to the song, and the two fused into a single unstoppable object. It spread the way things spread before "meme" was a household word — forums, email chains, AIM away messages, sports jumbotrons — places a dancing banana had no business being but showed up anyway.
By mid-decade it was entrenched enough for television to bow to it: a Family Guy episode that aired November 20, 2005 recreated the whole bit, banana suit and all, and a season-nine episode later brought it back for an encore. The memory that lingers is saturation — a four-year stretch when the joke should have died and simply refused to, and the specific joy (or dread) of hearing that first "It's peanut butter jelly time!" kick up one more time.
Similar items
Family Guy
The Griffin family of Quahog, Rhode Island—led by bumbling dad Peter, his wife Lois, and their motley crew of kids and pets—became a Fox phenomenon after its Super Bowl XXXIII premiere in 1999. A sharp departure from typical sitcom fare, Family Guy was built on rapid-fire cutaway gags and irreverent humor. Though Fox canceled it after just three seasons, a DVD renaissance in 2003 became so successful it sparked a network reversal—the show's comeback is considered television's first revival based on DVD sales.
eBaum's World
The early-2000s comedy and media dump every kid browsed instead of doing homework. Flash cartoons, prank-call soundboards, funny clips, and simple games — all stamped with the site's inescapable watermark, which became the running joke and the scandal at once.
The Hampster Dance
Four animated hamsters repeated ad nauseam, set to a sped-up Disney sample — one of the internet's first viral sensations. Created in 1997 by a Canadian art student as a GeoCities tribute to her pet hamster, The Hampster Dance puttered along unseen until a 1999 email chain sent it stratospheric, spawning hit songs, merch, and a permanent place in internet history.
FAIL Blog
A photo of a crooked staircase, a sign with a misspelled word, a skateboarder meeting a handrail, each stamped with one word: FAIL. Launched in January 2008 and bought by the lolcats company that spring, FAIL Blog turned a one-word caption into a noun the whole internet used.