Badgers Badgers Badgers

September 1, 2023 11:48 PM

Badgers, or Badgers Badgers Badgers, or The Badger Song, is 20 years old. Developed by Jonti Picking (Mr Weebl) the animation consists of 12 cartoon badgers doing calisthenics, a mushroom in front of a tree, and a snake in the desert. Related: the sentence "Badger badgers Badger badgers badger badger Badger badgers" is grammatically valid. And as we close in on Christmas...
posted by Wordshore (41 comments total)

See also: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
posted by Dysk at 12:18 AM on September 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

MUSHROOM, MUSHROOM
posted by neonamber at 12:20 AM on September 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

bagel bagel bagel bagel bagel bagel bagel bagel bagel bagel bagel bagel
muffin muffin
snack, a snack
snack, a snack
ooh, it's a snack
posted by Clowder of bats at 12:44 AM on September 2, 2023 [10 favorites]

But do the Buffalo buffalo buffalo Badger badger badgers? I can predict some confusion.
posted by rongorongo at 1:37 AM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Did you forget to mention that Weebl himself has commemorated the event with a new video on b3ta?
posted by illongruci at 2:12 AM on September 2, 2023 [14 favorites]

But do the Buffalo buffalo buffalo Badger badger badgers? I can predict some confusion.

Wait, does this make sense? Do the NJ buffalo embarrass Wisconsin pester badgers? There's one too many "badger"s in that sentence, isn't there?

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Badger badgers Badger badgers badger, though...
posted by Dysk at 2:24 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Teaching this song (and dance!) to my children was one of my most fulfilling moments as a mother.
Magical Trevor is still my fav though, pops into my head all the time.

he saw beans, lots of beans, lots of beans lots of beans, yeah beans, lots of beans, lots of beans lots of beans yeah yeah
posted by Baethan at 3:11 AM on September 2, 2023 [13 favorites]

I miss this Internet.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:48 AM on September 2, 2023 [61 favorites]

I utterly forgot that Brian May wrote the song - though not the lyrics? - as part of his activism against the UK Govt Badger culls.

Might be my personal nostalgia, but I too miss that more innocent yet weirdly sincere incarnation of the internet.
posted by Faintdreams at 4:04 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I miss this Internet.

Word.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:46 AM on September 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

Remembering the time I wanted to use this in a class presentation for reference class in library school.

Another student in the project group curled her lip and said "That's stupid."

I still use this when I teach about working in teams, as an example of How Not To Do It.
posted by humbug at 5:19 AM on September 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

I came late to the badger song, and it was fun, but it never quite captured me the way the Llama Song did.
posted by Night_owl at 5:26 AM on September 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

Here is a high level oral exegisis of this work at an academic conference, and the corresponding written paper.
posted by lalochezia at 6:04 AM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

I utterly forgot that Brian May wrote the song - though not the lyrics? - as part of his activism against the UK Govt Badger culls.

Brian May did a version of the song with altered lyrics (Save the Badger Badger Badger) about ten years after the original appeared on the Internet.


Magical Trevor is still my fav though, pops into my head all the time.

Everyone loves Magical Trevor!
posted by Dysk at 6:29 AM on September 2, 2023 [8 favorites]

But where can you see lions?
posted by Foosnark at 6:58 AM on September 2, 2023 [7 favorites]

Only in Kenya.
posted by Windopaene at 7:43 AM on September 2, 2023 [11 favorites]

I regularly tell people “when you come back, bring pie”. From a weebl and Bob flash animation.


I think there is heaps of these lovingly crafted projects out there, it’s just discovering them is basically down to metafilter for me.
posted by zenon at 8:02 AM on September 2, 2023 [11 favorites]

Patrick Moore Plays the Xylophone still gets stuck in my head on the regular.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:29 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Badgers? Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' badgers!"
posted by thecincinnatikid at 9:18 AM on September 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

Police police police can be extended indefinitely depending how many iterations you want of the police police doing policing.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:20 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I always enjoyed the LotR version, though it has gotten harder to find, due to IP reasons I assume. "Here come, here come, here come the Badgers..."
posted by Windopaene at 10:14 AM on September 2, 2023

'lo Bob, got pie?
posted by briank at 10:30 AM on September 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Possibly not coincidentally there was this riff in a Firesign Theater bit from a couple years earlier re: badgers and their mushroom related proclivities.
posted by StarkRoads at 10:40 AM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Previously. (Introducing the badgers to Mefi way, way back is one of my proudest moments on the site...)

Love his 20th anniversary video!
posted by rory at 11:11 AM on September 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

I always enjoyed the LotR version

They're taking the badgers to Isengard!
posted by SPrintF at 11:20 AM on September 2, 2023

The song calls for 11 uses of the word badger or badgers in a row. While the wikpedia suggest you can get 8, you can actually get 10 if you use a comma(wherein you are addressing a Badger badger).

Whence the 11th badger? WHENCE?

You can get away with infinite Badgers if you accept newspaper headline rules, which substitute commas for &. You also have to accept the redundancy. So the phrase would be something along the lines of "Mormon Kills Wife, Wife." But that's just getting silly.
posted by es_de_bah at 12:44 PM on September 2, 2023

Long before rick-rolling was a thing, at my workplace we used to dump obfuscated links to Magical Trevor into IRC. Which for the younguns among you, was a Flash animation set to infinite loop.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:47 PM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

My favorite (or majorly irritating) part of these old looping flash videos is that for many of them the audio and the video timing would slowly get out of sync. I can't remember if it was primarily because my Pentium II couldn't keep up with the video. Or if it was small errors compounding. Or both.
posted by zenon at 1:26 PM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

mmm pie
posted by inpHilltr8r at 1:50 PM on September 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Dick's Dicks dicks Dick's Dick's dicks. (A man named Dicks, who hails from Dick, Michigan, has foiled the store detectives at a Dick's Sporting Goods in Dick, Colorado.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:34 PM on September 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Potter, potter, potter….
posted by TedW at 2:49 PM on September 2, 2023

B3ta.com has a lot to answer for and is, amazingly, still going. Also the place we got rathergood.com and Cyriak.
posted by Grangousier at 2:55 PM on September 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

dick's dicks dicks dick's dick's dicks dick's. (a man named dicks, who hails from dick, michigan, has foiled the hamburgers that the store detectives at a dick's sporting goods in dick, colorado got from seattle)
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:56 PM on September 2, 2023

wait put another ' in there. put it in the right place, though. no, not there, over one, yeah, put it there. thanks!
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 3:07 PM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Still waitin' on that Weebl/Cyriak collab....
posted by smcdow at 3:09 PM on September 2, 2023

Dick's Dicks dicks Dick's Dick's dicks dicks' dicks. (A man named Dicks, who hails from Dick, Michigan, has foiled the penises of the store detectives - who are dicks - at a Dick's Sporting Goods in Dick, Colorado.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:00 PM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I always liked the badger song, but it’s no baby baboon with a spoon on the moon.
posted by Mchelly at 6:51 PM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Badger badger" was my daughter's favourite thing when she was a toddler.

I always liked Lord Peter Feathering-Walthamstone - the videos have disappeared from Weebl's site, but they're still on Vimeo: here, here, and here. I still want to see the drawing-room, dammit!
posted by e-man at 11:20 PM on September 2, 2023

I introduced my family to Weebl and Bob many years ago.

Our various routers/wifis/passwords have forever been the property of Weebl, Bob, and Monkey
posted by B3taCatScan at 6:17 PM on September 3, 2023

Back in the day I could watch/listen to the song for a long time. Many years ago I made a 5 minute long mp3 capture of Badger Badger. I have it on my iPhone and listen to it pretty regularly.
posted by neuron at 9:15 PM on September 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

I can go anywhere
posted by cirhosis at 1:19 AM on September 4, 2023 [1 favorite]