"Pen Pineapple Apple Pen"

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About

"Pen Pineapple Apple Pen" (Japanese: ペンパイナッポーアッポーペン, PenPainappōAppōPen) is a music video by Piko-Taro (ピコ太郎), a stage persona of the Japanese professional comedian Kosaka Daimaoh (古坂大魔王).^[1] In a similar vein to PSY's Gangnam Style, the video widely circulated on social media after being released on YouTube in late August 2016.

Origin

On August 25th, 2016, the music video was released on YouTube, in which Piko-Taro is shown dancing in front of a plain white background while singing about sticking a pen inside a pineapple and an apple to form a pen-pineapple-apple-pen (shown below). Within one month, the video gained over 7.9 million views and 4,000 comments.

Lyrics:

I have a pen
I have an apple
uuh
Apple pen!
I have a pen
I have a pineapple
uuh
Pineapple pen!

Apple pen
Pineapple pen
uuh
Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen!

Spread

The following month, the music video began widely circulating on Twitter and the video-sharing app Mix Channel. On September 18th, the おもしろ動画集 YouTube channel posted a compilation featuring parody versions of the music video, receiving more than 1.7 million views and 1,300 comments (since deleted). On September 21st, YouTuber ミクチャLOVE ２ uploaded a montage including several young women performing lip dubs of the song. In one week, the video gained over 1.6 million views and 500 comments.

On September 24th, YouTuber Chee Yee Teoh reposted the original music video, gaining upwards of 8.6 million views and 8,500 comments in four days. The following day, 9GAG reposted the original video on their Facebook page,^[3] where it gathered upwards of 57 million views and 1.08 million shares in 72 hours. On September 26th, YouTuber Taylor Kazunobu posted a montage video of people lip syncing the song (shown below). The following day, YouTuber Edho Zell posted a parody version of the music video (shown below, right). Meanwhile, an image outlining the history of Piko-Taro's comedy was submitted to 9gag.^[8]

Also on September 27, both CNN^[5] and the BBC^[4] published articles about the viral video and Justin Bieber tweeted that it was his "favorite video on the internet" (shown below).^[6] Over the next 24 hours, the tweet gained over 75,000 likes and 43,000 retweets.

Image Edits

In October 2016, Instagramers and Facbook Users began labeling a series of stills in the video to combine other people or objects. For example, On October 2nd, 2016, Instagram user kttatara^[10] gained 120 likes in four years for a post featuring Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton (shown below, left). The format continued to be used over the next several years. On February 6th, 2020, Redditor Grievous_Nix posted the format to r/dankmemes^[11] to make fun of another format (shown below, right). The post garnered over 22,000 points (89% upvoted) in a day.