Awesome Popcorn Chicken — Bowl of fried popcorn chicken on pink placemat with scallion pancakes on the side

Awesome Popcorn Chicken

2018viral videodead

Published August 1, 2026

Awesome Popcorn Chicken is a 2018 video meme centered on a clip of a child narrator excitedly presenting a plate of popcorn chicken before a superimposed jet drops a bomb on the food and he bursts into tears. The original YouTube upload sparked a short wave of remixes that kept the audio and swapped the plate for other targets.

mashup video memes child virality memes bait and switch memes 2018 memes

Overview

Awesome Popcorn Chicken is a video meme built around a short clip: a young child narrator gushes about his plate of popcorn chicken, a superimposed jet drops a bomb that vaporizes the food, and the child breaks into audible sobs3.

The tight three-beat structure made it easy remix bait, and editors quickly began keeping the audio track intact while swapping the popcorn chicken plate for video game footage and other pop culture scenes1.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (origin) / Instagram (viral spread)
Creator
Bepis
Date
2018

The original was uploaded to YouTube on June 17th, 2018 by a channel called Bepis under the title "Awesome Popcorn Chicken"2. The clip pulled more than 44,000 views in its first three months online3.

How It Spread

Instagram user @bepis.man posted the first widely circulated remix on August 29th, 2018, dropping the popcorn chicken audio and the jet visual over a clip from the Pokémon video game series1. That version drew more than 69,000 views and 9,700 likes within two weeks of posting3.

A day later, on August 30th, YouTuber Captain Alexman uploaded their own take on the format, which pulled about 3,700 views over the same two-week window2. The template stayed simple: keep the child's voiceover and the falling explosive, then swap in whatever target you want obliterated1.

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Instagram

How to Use This Meme

Editors typically preserve the original child narrator audio and the animated bomb drop, then composite the falling jet over a new image or video clip. Common targets include video game sprites, unexpected screenshots, and other food items standing in for the popcorn chicken plate.

Frequently Asked Questions