Flying Lawnmower

Note: Work in progress, researching, request editorship if any valuable info

About

Flying Lawnmower refers to footage of a Green remotely-controlled Lawnmower-model “airplane” flying and performing aerial stunts. The video saw a resurgence in popularity in 2012, inspiring a series of video remixes and animated GIFs with captions that are often time motivational or contain irrelevant quotes.

Origin

The lawnmower shown in the footage is a Sky Cutter flying lawnmower by custom model airplane producer FlyingThingz.^[3] It is unknown when the product was first put up for sale, but threads discussing the product can be found on the RC Universe forums as early as March 28th, 2002.^[4]

On November 15th, 2003, a link to a video of a flying Sky Cutter lawnmower was posted on the tech news website Slashdot.^[5] The video has since been removed. On October 28th, 2004, a video was uploaded to Metacafe^[1] of a Green Sky Cutter .40 V2 Lawnmower flying in the air and performing aerial stunts accompanied by the song “Cotton-Eyed Joe” by the 1990s’ Swedish Techno group Rednex (shown below).

Spread

On December 7th, 2004, the Metacafe video was uploaded to the Internet humor site CollegeHumor^[2]. On February 21st, 2005, Break “Cotton Eyed Joe” by Rednex. YTMND^[9]“Lawnmower Dreams” October 25th, 2005. On February 28, 2006, YouTuber Mike Helton uploaded the flying lawnmower “Cotton-Eyed Joe” video. Within the next seven years, the video received over 500,000 views and over 2,000 comments. On October 20, 2010, a remix of the video (shown below, left), featuring the song “Walking In the Air” by the Metal group Nightwish being used as the background song, was uploaded to Youtube, gaining over 200,000 views. On November 21st, the original video has managed to gain a mention on CNN’s “Viral Video” segment^[5] (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References