# Flying Lawnmower Flying Lawnmower is a test flight video of the Sky Cutter, a green remote-controlled model airplane built to look like a push mower, which went viral in 2004 when the clip was paired with Rednex's 'Cotton-Eyed Joe'[3]. The absurd footage got relentlessly remixed with new soundtracks and later became the base layer for a long-running wave of GIFs stamped with inspirational quotes[6]. ## Origin The aircraft in the video is the Sky Cutter, a model built and sold by FlyingThingz as a 'flying lawnmower' novelty kit[2]. The exact release date is not documented, but hobbyists were already discussing the design on the RC Universe forums by March 28th, 2002[1]. A link to a flight video of the Sky Cutter was posted to Slashdot on November 15th, 2003 under the headline 'Build Your Own Flying Lawn Mower,' though the original hosted file has since gone offline[4]. The viral life of the clip really starts on October 28th, 2004, when a Sky Cutter test flight set to Rednex's 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' was uploaded to Metacafe[3]. That cut, pairing the stunt flying with a 1990s Swedish techno-hoedown, is the version almost every later remix is responding to[5]. - **Platform:** Metacafe / YouTube (viral spread) - **Creator:** FlyingThingz (Sky Cutter aircraft) - **Date:** 2004 ## Overview The footage at the heart of Flying Lawnmower is a straightforward test flight of a Sky Cutter, a novelty RC plane shaped and painted to pass for a green push mower, built by the custom shop FlyingThingz[2]. In the clip, the mower-plane rolls across a field, lifts off, loops, hovers and generally does things no yard tool should do, which is why the video kept finding new audiences across the 2000s[3]. The meme itself is less about the aircraft and more about what people stapled onto the footage. The two load-bearing remix formats are the 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' edit by Rednex, which turns the stunts into a hoedown, and the R. Kelly 'I Believe I Can Fly' edit, which plays the clip completely straight as if the lawnmower earned its wings[6]. By the early 2010s a parallel strain of still-GIF edits took over Tumblr, pairing a looping cutout of the mower in flight with earnest motivational quotes about trying, dreaming and never giving up[7]. A later image-macro branch grew out of 4chan-adjacent board culture, where the mower-in-flight GIF got combined with the Gorilla Munch cereal mascot and the caption 'There is no need to be upset,' which became the standard reply whenever someone asked why they should care about a particular meme[5]. ## How It Spread After the Metacafe upload, the 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' edit jumped to CollegeHumor on December 7th, 2004 and then to Break on February 21st, 2005, which locked in its status as a staple early-2000s video-sharing site forward[5]. YTMND user Xero built the 'Lawnmower Dreams' page on October 25th, 2005, swapping Rednex out for Nightwish's 'Walking in the Air' and treating the flight as something genuinely majestic[8]. YouTuber Mike Helton reposted the Rednex cut on February 28th, 2006, and that upload picked up more than 500,000 views and over 2,000 comments over the next seven years[9]. The second big wave came with the R. Kelly remix uploaded by Baronduko on March 31st, 2008, which was written up by the tech blog Geekologie on April 3rd[6] and by The Inquisitr on March 11th, 2009[10]. BuzzFeed covered the Xero 'Walking in the Air' remix in a November 16th, 2010 post titled 'Flying Lawnmower Of Majesty'[11], and CNN included the Cotton-Eyed Joe version in a 'Viral Video Rewind' segment five days later[5]. Tumblr turned the clip into a motivational template. The single-topic blog Lawnmowerinspiration launched on February 2nd, 2011, soliciting earnest quotes from visitors to overlay on the GIF[7]. On February 1st, 2012, user Roomnumber203 posted a version carrying the line 'You'll never know, unless you try,' which pulled over 100,000 notes by early 2013[12]. Later that year, on August 11th, 2012, YouTuber Simen Martinussen uploaded 'There is no need to be upset,' pairing the mower with the Gorilla Munch mascot and Géza Pécsi's take on Liszt's 'Miserere,' which drew more than 124,000 views within six months[5]. ## How to Use The template typically runs in two directions. One is the audio remix: take the Sky Cutter test flight footage, strip the original sound, and overlay a wildly mismatched or earnestly triumphant track, 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' and 'I Believe I Can Fly' being the canonical choices[6]. The other is the inspirational GIF: loop a short cutout of the mower in flight and stamp a sincere motivational quote on top, in the style popularized by the Lawnmowerinspiration Tumblr[7]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Flying Lawnmower? Flying Lawnmower is a test flight video of a Sky Cutter, a novelty RC airplane built by FlyingThingz to look like a green push mower, which spread online through audio remixes and inspirational quote GIFs[2][5]. ### Where did Flying Lawnmower come from? The Sky Cutter aircraft was discussed on the RC Universe forums as early as March 28th, 2002, and the viral 'Cotton-Eyed Joe' edit of its test flight was uploaded to Metacafe on October 28th, 2004[1][3]. ### What does Flying Lawnmower mean? The joke is the mismatch between the humble object (a lawnmower) and the triumphant stunts it performs, which is why remixers set it to songs like 'I Believe I Can Fly' and overlaid earnest motivational quotes[6][7]. ### How do you use Flying Lawnmower? Common uses include swapping the audio for a wildly mismatched track in the style of the Rednex and R. Kelly remixes, or looping the flight GIF under an inspirational quote in the Lawnmowerinspiration format[6][7]. ### Is Flying Lawnmower still popular? It is a classic early-2000s viral video rather than a current trend, with its biggest waves on CollegeHumor, YouTube and Tumblr between 2004 and 2012 and later coverage on BuzzFeed and CNN[5][11]. ## References 1. [https://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/scratch-building-aircraft-design-3d-cad-174/88907-flying-lawnmower.html#post88907]() 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20160103015536/https://flyingthingz.com/sky-cutter-green/]() 3. [https://web.archive.org/web/20141008023929/https://www.metacafe.com/watch/5930/skycutter/]() 4. [https://slashdot.org/story/04/10/22/2115243/build-your-own-flying-lawn-mower]() 5. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/flying-lawnmower]() 6. [https://geekologie.com/2008/04/flying-lawnmower-is-the-awesom.php]() 7. [https://lawnmowerinspiration.tumblr.com/]() 8. [https://lawnmowerdreams.ytmnd.com/]() 9. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNWfqVWC2KI]() 10. [https://www.inquisitr.com/19797/those-magnificent-men-and-their-remote-controlled-flying-lawnmowers/]() 11. [https://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomerobo/flying-lawnmower-of-majesty-23kj]() 12. [https://web.archive.org/web/20171011201854/http://roomnumber203.tumblr.com:80/post/16858012574/i-literally-cant-get-over-this]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/flying-lawnmower Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library