Dancing Banana

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A rendition of the Dancing Banana

The Dancing Banana (a.k.a. Banana Man) is a popular emoticon, created by Candice Martel, a Canadian. 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 and a dancing pepper. All three appear together in a flash emoticon that is popular in chatrooms.

[edit] Other Appearances

Today, many people will recognize the image from a Flash animation of the banana dancing to the song "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" by the Buckwheat Boys. This animation, "Banana," (a.k.a. Peanut Butter Jelly Time) was created in 2000 by Ryan Gancenia Etrata and Kevin Flynn and is typically referred to as "Peanut Butter Jelly Time". The flash animation was placed on eBaum's World without permission from the original authors. Although this boosted knowledge of the emoticon and the animation, some feel the original authors should recieve the credit they deserve and should be known for their work.

Other emoticons emulate the banana in appearance, but come instead in the form of such things as a carrot, pickle, apple, mango, pineapple, orange, bean, broccoli, pepper, video games characters and other unrelated characters including Yoshi.

In September 2005, the Dancing Banana became a recurring character on Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island, a show on the WC Television Network.

Hot Topic sells shirts of the banana with the phrase "It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time" accompanying it.

Brian as the Dancing Banana in Family Guy

The banana emoticon also got another popularity boost when it was featured in the popular television show Family Guy, where Brian, the dog, dressed up in a banana suit and sang the "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" song. There is also an action figure and t-shirt of Brian in the suit, complete with maracas.