Hopkin Green Frog
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Hopkin Green Frog was an Internet phenomenon which emerged in late 2004.
Hand-drawn fliers requesting the whereabouts of a lost frog were spotted in various places around Seattle beginning in late 2003. Although there were several revisions of the flier, the later popularised version included two drawings of the frog alongside some grammatically incorrect text written in what appears to be a child's script, which read as follows:
-
if I looking for frog
him name is hopkin green frog
I lost my frog
329-3228
Love, Terry
P.S. I'll find my frog
Who took my frog
Who found my frog
2012 15th Ave. S
11>
In September 2004, a scanned version of this letter began to circulate the internet. A digit of the original phone number was removed shortly after to discourage people from phoning up. Digitally altered riffs on the letter's content cropped up, much akin to the All Your Base phenomenon. These images involve the frog pictures and/or snippets of text from Terry's letter, pasted onto various pictures, from World War II propaganda posters to television news footage to photographs of aircraft carriers as well as eBay stills. Although humorous, many of these expressed concern (perhaps jokingly) for the child's loss. Lostfrog.org was set up in November 2004, which collected many of the altered versions of the meme along with the original poster.
The internet community responded by researching the frog and its owner. Hopkin was found to be a toy frog, and the phone number was traced to the parents. An explanation of the poster's origin is available here. Terry was an autistic 16-year-old who had received the toy frog with a McDonald's "Animal Alley" Happy Meal. After losing the toy frog, he created the "lost" fliers and posted them around his neighborhood. The boy's family was contacted in November 2004 about the toy, with the offer of a new one to replace the original Hopkins. The family declined the offer, believing that since the boy had by then forgotten about his stuffed frog, a new one would only upset him with unpleasant memories.
[edit] External links
- lostfrog.org
- Explanation of Hopkin Green Frog at whybark.com
- Flash animation parodying the search for the frog as a hardboiled film noir detective story
- Flickr group about Hopkin Green Frog (photo sharing site)
- Alternate Hopkin poster found by K. Thor Jensen
[edit] Sources
- Whybark, Mike (November 22, 2004). "Hopkin Explained". http://mike.whybark.com/archives/001951.html.
- Knobel, Michele (2006). "Memes and Affinity Spaces: some implications for policy and digital divides in education". Montclair State University, USA & Central Queensland University, Australia. http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/freetoview.asp?j=elea&vol=3&issue=3&year=2006&article=13_Knobel_ELEA_3_3_web. Retrieved 7 July 2011.
