Hopkin Green Frog

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Hopkin Green Frog was an Internet phenomenon which emerged in late 2004.

Hopkins.

Hand-drawn fliers requesting the whereabouts of a lost frog were spotted in various places around Seattle during 2004. Although there were several revisions of the flier, the later popularised version included two drawings of the frog alongside some grammatically incorrect text written in what appears to be a child's script, which read as follows:

"if I looking for frog
him name is hopkin green frog
I lost my frog
329-3228
Love, Terry
P.S. I'll find my frog
Who took my frog
Who found my frog
2012 15th Ave. S"

In September 2004, a scanned version of this letter began to circulate the internet. A digit of the original phone number was shortly after removed to discourage people from phoning up. Photoshopped riffs on the letter's content cropped up, much akin to the All Your Base phenomenon. These images involve the frog pictures and/or snippets of text from Terry's letter, pasted onto various pictures, from World War II propaganda posters to television news footage to photographs of aircraft carriers as well as eBay stills. Although humorous, many of these expressed concern (perhaps jokingly) for the child's loss. Lostfrog.org was set up in November 2004, which collected all of the photoshopped versions of the meme along with the original poster.

The internet community responded by researching the frog and its owner. Hopkin was found to be a toy frog, and the phone number was traced to the parents. An explanation of the poster's origin is available here. Terry was an autistic 16-year-old who had received the toy frog with a McDonald's "Animal Alley" Happy Meal. After losing the toy frog, he created the "lost" fliers and posted them around his neighborhood.