The Gummy Bear Song

About

The Gummy Bear Song is a novelty dance-pop song written by German composer Christian Schneider in reference to Gummibär, a German brand of baby bear-shaped candy. Readily made available as mobile ringtone, its popularity can be comparable to that of Axel F and Crazy Frog, characterized by obnoxious repetition of lyrics and catchy melodies.

Origin

The original song was released as a single in 2007 as a 30-second clip in Hungarian. It was eventually translated and released into over a dozen different languages including English, Spanish, French and Swedish, allowing it to mature into an international phenomenon.

With the now infamous Gummy Bear Song, the video soon went viral on both YouTube and MySpace. Collectively, the English version of the song has 105 million views between the two main editions on YouTube and the one on MySpace.

Gummibar.net, the official site, keeps an archive of all of the versions of the original, as well as the other songs that have been recorded in the Gummy Bear style since.

Spread

The video spread to video hubs such as I Am Bored.com, Metacafe, Yahoo, and FunnyJunk, gaining views and popularity throughout the internets. In July 2008, two years after its release, Metro.co.uk wrote an article on the popularity of the song in July 2008.

The original ring tone spent a large amount of time topping ring tone charts, in particular, the Canadian Jamster chart in February 2009 and iTunes Dance chart in April 2009.

Google trends shows that the song is still popular, still spiking at times even this year.

Derivatives

The Ash22 remix, uploaded in May 2007, has over 4,800,000 views.

Hannah Montana mashup (August 2007) 1,172,000+ views

Techno Remix (March 2008) 2,360,000+ views

Chipmunk version (April 2008) 4,555,000+ views

Mario mashup (May 2008) 374,000+ views

Live Action (August 2008) 572,000+ views

Backward (October 2008) 190,000+ views