Twitter screenshot by Blake @NeilNevins showing the Quiznos Spongmonkeys commercial with the caption that Gen Z wouldn't believe it was real.

Spongmonkeys

2003viral videoclassic

Published November 11, 2026

Spongmonkeys are googly-eyed, rodent-like creatures created by British animator Joel Veitch in 2003, who sang the song 'We Like the Moon' in a surreal Flash video on Rathergood.com. Quiznos licensed the characters for a 2004 ad campaign about toasted subs with a pepper bar, and in June 2019 a viral tweet about the ads resurfaced the creatures to a new wave of millennials on Twitter.

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Overview

A Spongmonkey is a crudely composited animal photograph, usually a rodent or small mammal, with oversized human eyes and a gaping mouth pasted on top, animated so the mouth flaps while a high-pitched voice sings nonsense lyrics1. Joel Veitch's characters typically float against painted backdrops, strum acoustic guitars, and wear tiny period costumes such as a bowler hat or an 18th-century seafaring cap2. The humor leans on the gap between the twee Flash-era animation and the unsettling, almost demonic faces screeching about sandwiches or the moon.

The word 'spong' predates the characters themselves and comes from the b3ta.com image board community, where it referred to the practice of pasting giant staring eyes with tiny pupils onto photos as a Photoshop gag3. Veitch combined that b3ta visual grammar with his rodent imagery and a catchy falsetto song, producing a template that was easy to spread as a looping Flash file on early-2000s websites before YouTube existed1. Readers at the time passed the clip through email forwards and office intranets, which helped the song 'We Like the Moon' escape the b3ta audience and reach general internet users.

Commentary around the Spongmonkeys has always circled a single question, repeated in Slate's 2004 column: what are these creatures2? Reader submissions to that column called them 'gerbils with birth defects,' 'Mr. Potato Rats,' 'drug-addled, castrato hamsters,' and 'hell lemurs,' which captured how viewers reacted to the unidentifiable rodent anatomy stretched behind the human features2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Rathergood.com (origin) / Television advertising (viral spread) / Twitter (2019 resurgence)
Creator
Joel Veitch
Date
2003

Joel Veitch, a British web animator and musician who ran the site Rathergood.com, posted the first Spongmonkeys video on January 24th, 20031. Titled 'We Like the Moon,' the Flash clip showed two of the creatures floating in a starry sky while one strummed a guitar and both sang about loving the moon, marmots, cheese, and dirigibles2. The Rathergood archive confirms the song dates back to a 2002 demo, with the animated short going public in early 20034.

The name itself was coined on the b3ta.com message board, where 'spong' already described the running joke of pasting bulging eyes onto photographs3. Veitch later re-uploaded 'We Like the Moon' to the Rathergood YouTube channel on November 3rd, 2007, where it drew more than 1.1 million views5. Rathergood is explicit that the 2002 song 'spawned the famous Quiznos ads of 2003,' tying the original character work directly to the ad campaign that followed4.

How It Spread

Quiznos licensed Veitch's characters for a national television campaign that aired roughly throughout 2004, after an ad agency staffer received 'We Like the Moon' in a forwarded email and pitched it to the sub chain2. Veitch rewrote the song for the ads, swapping the moon for toasted sandwiches: 'We love the subs! 'Cuz they are good to us. The Quiznos subs. They are tasty, they are crunchy, they are warm because they toast them. They got a pepper bar!'2. Chief marketing officer Trey Hall told Slate that viewer mail broke into three roughly equal camps, confused, disgusted, or convinced the campaign was genius2.

Adweek reported the ads were discontinued by the end of 2004 as Quiznos ended its relationship with the Martin Agency, and the trade publication filed a tongue-in-cheek obituary for the 'bug-eyed, misshapen, guitar-playing, moon-loving, rat-like Spongmonkeys'8. Veitch produced several Quiznos spots during the run, not just the famous pepper-bar version, including variants riffing on coupons and other promotions9. The clips kept circulating on YouTube after the campaign ended, with reaction coverage from Nostalgia Critic and Good Mythical Morning keeping them in rotation for nostalgia audiences.

On June 16th, 2019, writer Erin Sullivan, tweeting as @sullivem, posted the pepper-bar ad with the caption 'millennials don't own homes because this quiznos commercial put a hex on us as children,' which collected tens of thousands of retweets and over 100,000 likes10. HuffPost, the AV Club, and Eater all wrote follow-up pieces that week, with Eater noting the quaintness of a fast-food chain hiring the original animator rather than ripping off a meme6. User @Stone1492 joked the 2003 ad had 'single-handedly set gay rat weddings back 16 years,' and @Saint_SIl wrote that Quiznos had been 'advertising with a short lived internet meme long before the current state of corporate twitter'7.

Timeline

2003-01-24

Joel Veitch posts 'We Like the Moon' featuring two Spongmonkeys to Rathergood.com.

2004-02

Slate publishes Seth Stevenson's column explaining the Quiznos 'singing rodents' after reader mail floods in.

2004-12

Adweek reports the Quiznos Spongmonkey ads are discontinued after Martin Agency parts ways with the chain.

2007-11-03

Rathergood uploads 'We Like the Moon' to YouTube, where it later passes 1.1 million views.

2019-06-16

Erin Sullivan (@sullivem) tweets the pepper-bar ad with the 'hex on us as children' caption, going viral.

2019-06-18

Eater, HuffPost, and the AV Club publish retrospectives on the Spongmonkeys and the ad campaign.

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How to Use This Meme

Spongmonkeys function less as a user-remixable template and more as a shared cultural reference point. Fans typically quote the Quiznos lyrics in a high-pitched wail, often the line 'they got a pepper bar' or 'we love the subs,' to express surreal delight or ironic enthusiasm6. On Twitter the common convention is to post the original commercial clip with a caption applying its 'hex' to a modern grievance, as writer Erin Sullivan did with her homeownership joke in 20197.

Frequently Asked Questions