"Pen Pineapple Apple Pen" — Piko-Taro performing PPAP with Japanese and English title text overlay

"Pen Pineapple Apple Pen"

2016viral videoclassic

Published September 21, 2026

In August 2016, Japanese comedian Kazuhiko Kosaka uploaded a 45 second music video in which his leopard-print alter ego Piko-Taro sang about jamming a pen into an apple and a pineapple. The clip picked up speed through September and hit global saturation after Justin Bieber called it his favorite internet video, spawning one of the defining absurdist earworms of 2016.

earworm memes japanese internet memes viral song memes absurdist humor memes 2016 memes

Overview

"Pen Pineapple Apple Pen," often shortened to PPAP, is a minute long music video built around a chirpy loop and a handful of English phrases. Piko-Taro, a fictional DJ played by Japanese comedian Kazuhiko Kosaka, dances in front of a plain white background wearing a leopard-print suit and matching scarf while singing about combining a pen with fruit1. The payoff word, "pen pineapple apple pen," arrives after two setup verses, each built on the same call-and-response structure2.

The song has no real chorus, no bridge, and clocks in at roughly 45 seconds, which turned out to be perfect fuel for short mobile clips2. Beyond the video itself, fans built an image macro template from screenshots of Piko-Taro pointing at each object, swapping the pen, apple, and pineapple for other characters or ideas to visualize a mashup5. That secondary format kept the joke alive years after the song's initial burst.

Much of the appeal is the mismatch between Kosaka's serious DJ back catalogue and the deliberately dumb Piko-Taro character. The half-broken English lyrics, the mimeable arm choreography, and the outfit are the joke, not accidents of production, which is why the video worked in translation across dozens of languages1.

Origin & Background

Platform
YouTube (source) / Facebook and Twitter (viral spread)
Creator
Kazuhiko Kosaka
Date
2016

Kazuhiko Kosaka, a 40 year old Japanese comedian and DJ also known by the stage name Kosaka Daimaoh, invented the Piko-Taro character and posted the video to that character's official YouTube channel on August 25, 20164. Kosaka later told fans in a tweet that the song came together almost by accident, saying he had been "singing it too soon" while messing with the music1. In its first month online the clip picked up roughly 7.9 million views without much English language press attention5.

The character was billed inside the fiction as Piko-Taro's own act rather than a Kosaka side project, and the outfit, mannerisms, and clipped English are core to the bit2. Comments on the earliest YouTube upload set the tone the meme would carry through the fall, with one of the first viewers writing, "How I end up watching this??? What is wrong with society?"2

How It Spread

The clip gathered force through September 2016. On September 18, the compilation channel おもしろ動画集 posted a reel of parody covers that pulled in more than 1.7 million views6. Three days later, the YouTuber ミクチャLOVE ２ uploaded a montage of young women lip syncing the song on the Japanese app Mix Channel, which passed 1.6 million views in a week7. On September 23, Kosaka tweeted "Let's dance with Piko Taro!" and the #PPAP hashtag started trending on Japanese Twitter2.

International reposting turned it into a global hit within days. YouTuber Chee Yee Teoh reuploaded the original on September 24 and reached 8.6 million views in four days5. The following day, 9GAG shared the clip to its Facebook page, where the repost drew more than 44 million views inside a few days according to the BBC1. On September 26, YouTuber Taylor Kazunobu posted a lip sync montage stitched from user submissions8, and a day later YouTuber Edho Zell filmed a parody restaging with alternate props9.

Mainstream press piled on by the end of that same week. Both BBC News1 and CNN2 ran articles on September 27 about the viral track and the teens filming themselves dancing to it. That afternoon, Justin Bieber tweeted a link to the video with the caption "My favorite video on the internet," pushing it to his 88 million followers and cementing its Western breakthrough3. The tweet drew roughly 75,000 likes and 43,000 retweets in the first 24 hours5.

Timeline

2016-08-25

Kazuhiko Kosaka uploads the original "Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen" video to Piko-Taro's YouTube channel.

2016-09-18

YouTube channel おもしろ動画集 posts a parody compilation, passing 1.7 million views.

2016-09-21

The ミクチャLOVE ２ channel uploads a Mix Channel lip sync montage that hits 1.6 million views in a week.

2016-09-23

Kosaka tweets "Let's dance with Piko Taro!" as #PPAP trends on Japanese Twitter.

2016-09-25

9GAG reposts the video to Facebook, where it draws tens of millions of views.

2016-09-27

BBC News and CNN publish write-ups; Justin Bieber tweets the video as his "favorite video on the internet."

2016-10-02

Instagram user kttatara posts a Trump and Clinton mashup using the four panel image template.

2020-02-06

Redditor Grievous_Nix uses the PPAP layout on r/dankmemes and clears 22,000 points in a day.

Frequently Asked Questions