HYPNOTIC FROGS
By:
April 10, 2022
This post is a spinoff from an installment (on the subject of 20th-century pop-culture frogs) that I contributed to the BESTIARY series, here at HILOBROW, earlier this year. That post featured some epic footnotes, which I suspect no one read; below, please find one of them.
The frog’s bulging hemispheric eyes, not to mention its association with ancient Egypt — and with the occult in general (e.g., “eye of newt and toe of frog”) — seem to suggest a hypnotic power, an ability to bend the human will to its own purposes.
![](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2030/09/s-l1600-1-1-768x1024.jpg)
The original Hypno Toad?
![](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2030/09/s-l1600-1-646x1024.png)
Not totally sure what’s going on here, but this frog seems hypnotic. It’s certainly issuing a command.
![](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2030/09/s-l1600-9-722x1024.jpg)
Undated midcentury comic book panel that I recently came across.
![](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2030/09/s-l1600-1-14-1024x879.jpg)
Surely Cha! Cha!, the red-eyed tree frog is commanding us to obey.
![](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2030/09/s-l1600-1-15-768x1024.jpg)
Game Boy makes this stuff very explicit.
![](https://www.hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2030/09/hypnotoad-animated.gif)
The villainous Hypnotoad first appeared in “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid,” a 2001 episode of Futurama.
Hypnotoad has since become a meme, leading to this sort of thing: