



About

Peanut Butter Jelly Time (PBJT) is a flash animation that consists of an animated Dancing Banana character and the song "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" by The Buckwheat Boyz. Known for being both obnoxious and funny, the Dancing Banana video became a hit in the early 2000s, leading to PBJT-related merchandise and dozens of parodies and tribute videos on YouTube.

Origin

The original Peanut Butter Jelly Time flash animation was created by Ryan Gancenia Etrata and Kevin Flynn under the screen names RalphWiggum and Comrade Flynn, who posted it to the Offtopic forums in early 2002.





On March 21st, 2002, a Newgrounds user YrebWarts posted Etrata and Flynn's work on the popular Flash gallery site, where the clip became wildly popular spawning a number of remakes.

Spread

By November 13th, 2002, Peanut Butter Jelly Time made its debut into the mainstream media when popular NBC sitcom Ed portrayed the main character watching the flash animation in Season 3, Episode 7 entitled “The Wedding.” Over the course of 2003, the first two flash animations made the rounds across internet humor sites and message boards, such as eBaum's World , SomethingAwful and Albino Blacksheep among others.

On April 30th, 2004, the Dancing Banana song spread to the video-sharing community YTMND, where it led to over one hundreds derivative sites featuring remixed versions of "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" and other dancing characters, most notably Brian from Family Guy and the Jelly Belly

The meme once again broke into mainstream network television on November 20th, 2005, when it was referenced in Family Guy in Season 4, Episode 16 titled “The Courtship of Stewie's Father.” In the episode, Brian the dog performs his own rendition of Peanut Butter Jelly Time, dressed as the dancing banana and shaking maracas.





Notable Examples

Indicative of the animation's lasting legacy on the online video culture, there are dozens of derivative videos including remixes and mashups available on YouTube, many of which have accumulated hundreds of thousands of views.





Know Your Meme B-Roll

Our alumni Internet scientist Elspethjane performed the Peanut Butter Jelly Time dance in a B-roll video of the episode that was uploaded on May 12th, 2009:





Search Interest

Google search queries for the keyword "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" seemed to have been on downslope since its debut in 2002, although online interest resurged and peaked in December 2005 with its appearance in an episode of Family Guy.

Know Your Meme Store

External References