Foamy the Squirrel

2003

Date: 2003 · Place: Newgrounds, Illwillpress.com, New Jersey · Figures: Jonathan Ian Mathers, animator and voice · Foamy, anthropomorphic rant squirrel · Tags: Flash, Rant, Newgrounds 01. A Squirrel Yells at the Coffee Shop Jonathan Ian Mathers, a New Jersey animator, launches Foamy the Squirrel via his Illwillpress site and Newgrounds account around 2003. Each episode is a stationary squirrel delivering a three-minute rant in a sped-up voice. Topics: coffee shop customers, fanboys, organised religion, traffic, hygiene. Mathers writes, animates, voices, and uploads weekly. The output is closer to a webcomic schedule than to an animation studio. 02. The First Parasocial Cartoon Mascot Foamy collects a fan army that buys T-shirts, quotes episodes verbatim, and tattoos the character. The rants are not really jokes; they are tribal markers. Watching Foamy is how you identify other people who hated their high school. Foamy predicts the YouTube rant channel by half a decade. He is the Filthy Frank, the Onision, the Nostalgia Critic, prototyped in a single Flash file per week. Sources • Illwillpress.com archive, 2003-2010 • Newgrounds, Jonathan Ian Mathers user page • KnowYourMeme, Foamy the Squirrel