The Flash years
Badger Badger Badger
2003
Badger Badger Badger is a looping Flash cartoon by the British animator Jonti Picking, known online as Weebl. Twelve badgers bob through their exercises to a chanted dance beat, now and then interrupted by a mushroom and a snake. It went live on B3ta.com in September 2003.
- Year
- September 2003
- Made by
- Jonti Picking, the British animator known as Weebl
- Where it started
- B3ta.com, a British humour site, then Weebl’s own site
- What it was
- A Flash cartoon that loops forever
- Also called
- Badgers, The Badger Song
The story
Picking, from Doncaster, posted it on 2 September 2003, British time; in New York it was still the evening of 1 September, which is why some sources give that date. The words were only meant to hold a place until he wrote better ones, and the tune grew out of a 1990s dance hit with a duck quacking through it.
He guessed it might reach 50,000 views; it did that on a single Sunday. With home internet still slow, the small Flash file was perfect for passing on, and it travelled by email chains, forums and personal websites. The original never ends, which became part of the joke.
By 2004 it had brought Picking to MTV Europe, which built a TV show around his characters Weebl and Bob, and in January 2005 British Yahoo! users voted his site, Weebl’s Stuff, the people’s choice website of the year.
Why it matters
It is one of the defining hits of the Flash years, when small files that looped forever shaped how moving pictures travelled online. It also showed that one animator, working alone, could build an audience and a career from his own website.
Where it is now
Picking put it on YouTube in 2008, where it has passed 35 million views, remade it in 2013 with Queen’s Brian May as a protest song against a badger cull, and in May 2026 the British Film Institute preserved the original in its national archive.
Sources
- Badgers (animation) (Wikipedia)
- The lost era of memes, with Jonti Picking (Fasthosts)
- Badgers, in the BFI’s online video collection (BFI Replay)
- The UK has formally declared Badger Badger Badger worthy of preservation (Boing Boing, 2026)
- Badger protest song with Brian May (The Guardian, 2013)
Checked against these sources on 25 October 2026.