Bubble UK: A Birthday Look at Internet Wonder, Salad Fingers

A much loved web-series, now 10 Years old (nearly),  the bizarre but lovable Salad Fingers recently made a return to our monitors, I thought I’d explore the world of this strange being.

By now, it’s what you might call an internet institution; and it was back in 2004, when many of the creators of today’s best loved web-series were still at animation school, British animator, David Firth, began posting his Salad Fingers tales online. This was a whole year before YouTube was even founded, so the cartoon pre-dates almost every other series on the channel. By 2005 the series had picked up such a loyal fan-base that the San Francisco Chronicle ranked it in the “Top Ten Pop Culture Phenomena” of that year, quite a feat for a cartoon about a mentally disturbed green gentlemen with elongated fingers and no ears or nose. By 2007 the cartoon had premiered at the Sydney Underground Film Festival where the first seven episodes were shown back to back during the events “Re-Animation” slot.

Developed, voiced and animated by David Firth, who shares writing duties with Christian “Crust” Pickup, Salad Fingers is a series that defies explanation. The lead character is a dour, disfigured, humanoid who surrounds himself with death and decay. Salad Fingers’ only friends appear to be Finger Puppets, who include his “best friend” Hubert Cumberdale and the mother of his “child”, Margory Stewart-Baxter. The series updated regularly between 2004-5, with only one episode a year appearing after that. In 2007, Salad Fingers went on hiatus until the episode, “Letter” appeared online in 2011. Again, vanishing from our lives for two years, David Firth recently posted an early 10th anniversary special on Newgrounds and YouTube, which you can watch below.

Since the inception of Salad Fingers in 2004, David Firth has been involved in many online, and real world art projects and animations, but seeing as it has its own Wikipedia page, an average of 500,000 views per episode and a shop full of awesome things, it will be Salad Fingers that the artist is most associated with, and this is a good thing: it’s a wonderfully bizarre cartoon that to me, is very particular to internet culture, because I believe the internet is the only place where something so unfathomable and so unique could attain such a loyal fan-base and be allowed to flourish as it has. Happy Birthday Salad Fingers, long may you weird us out and please don’t make us wait two years for another episode!

http://youtu.be/1kCVtPhFQNU