So damn, just what is this phenomenon here?!? Well, some history! (Don't worry, this wont be an apple history crash course, I'm too lazy to type all that out)

The Apple iPod had already been introduced by the time 2003 rolled around, and it had its fair share of pop culture presence! However, by that time, Apple was already lookin' to invest in a new ad campaign for their product. In this same year, one art director (Susan Alinsangan) came up with the idea of using dancing sillhouettes to advertise the product! Now fun fact, Steve Jobs wasn't actually all too confident on this ad campaign, as he didn't believe it really sold what the iPod even did as a product. Regardless, after some convincing the campaign moved on, and starting in 2003, these commercials would be set onto TV and to the world!! And goddamn were they a SUCCESS!

Now when I say these ads were iconic, i mean they were ICONIC. They had a crazyyyy grip on absolutely everyone, people were just enamored with the look and feel of these ads!! And not to feed into Apple's corporate ego but god even I'm STILL obsessed with how good these are. The energy? The music? The dancing? The graphics? CMONNN THEYRE JUST SO GOOD!! They would go on to stay on air for FOUR YEARS! ending around 2008, but that was enough time to leave quite the mark on pop culture!

So, where does online culture (and as I mentioned, anime forum culture) come into play here? Well, here's the basic gist:

These ads were really simple in appearance: just 3 colors, 1 silhouette, and 1 white iPod on the image? Sure, maybe recreating an animation for that would take forever, but it wouldn't be hard at all to edit an image to look like these ads! Just imagine, what if your favorite anime character was in one of these ads? Heck, wouldn't be too hard to pull off with a couple of minutes on MS Paint! Thus, iPod Ad Spoofs were born, and they would go on to DOMINATE anime forums for the latter half of the 2000s!

As i mentioned, these were really easy to recreate; All you had to do was take a JPEG (or, PNG if you're feeling fancy nyoho) of your favorite anime character, completely color it in in solid black, quickly draw 2 lines and a box for the iPod and the earphones, and boom! you've got your own supah cool and kickass icon that looks like a totally real Apple commercial!! Some people would go a little further and edit in details for these characters, but most people would stick to the solid silhouettes most of the time.

Now I know its really easy to think these look way too simple and like, maybe not even that cool for them to be recreated so often, but i honestly get why they were so popular!! These ads are just so much fun and so cool and ICONIC, and so easy to recreate, why not partake in the fun? One thing I've learned after a billion years online is that if the trend is fun and easy to take part in, people will always wanna join in.

Another draw to this trend was also putting in a little personalized tagline next to the characters on these drawings! you'd just put a lowercase "i" and then follow it up with their name, a character trait of theirs, a nickname, something they like or an inside joke; (You can see what I mean just by looking at the compilation up next) , super fun and simple x)

Many of these were of course, anime themed, though there were spoofs for American cartoons and other TV shows as well! (and some for horses. I counted 2 iHorse icons in my research. Splendid) However, most notably these types of edits DOMINATED Naruto fandom, and i mean DOMINATED. Some people may even know it as iNaruto because they only saw edits of these for Naruto characters!! It was their bread and butter, and while they weren't the only anime fandom to dabble in these edits, they were really the ones who did it the most :P

Sadly, as many things do, these images died out with time; You may see some out in the wild for more modern shows (i found some spoofs for stuff that came from as recently as 2018!) , but its not as big or widespread as they used to be ;( It kinda sucks, but thast just the natural advance of time! I think we have enough for a lifetime and hey, at least it serves as a good little throwback to a simpler time, I've quite enjoyed revisiting them :DD

 But hey, enough o  my babbling already, here's the main course of this blog , a gallery of anime iPod ad spoofs!!

(and sidenote, yes, an unholy amount of these are Naruto themed. As i said these ads had Naruto fans in a CHOKEHOLD)

Anyways, that's basically it folks!! Kind of a shorter entry, but I wanted a chance to talk about these since they've been on my mind for quite the while now, so I hope you all like this topic as much as i do! x)it just makes me so nostalgic, and also impresses me because i still think this is the coolest thing ever LOL

(and again huge credits to this original layout and creator tai7kmusic (https://layouts.spacehey.com/layout?id=24806) !!! I just changed the background to an image, and that's basically it!)