Lunar lunacy from pioneering Flash animator, songwriter and online humourist, Joel Veitch

This sublime slice of online weirdness from 2002 features the ‘Spongmonkies’, a pair of crudely animated animal characters with incongruously large eyes, human mouths and high-pitched voices, declaring their love for Earth’s single natural satellite.

Creator Joel Veitch helped herald a new era of ‘random’ online humour – equal parts odd, surreal and just plain daft – with a series of Flash animation spoofs, skits and songs. These were hosted on the humour platform b3ta and his own website, RatherGood.com, where such bizarre and fundamentally uncommercial material could find an audience and flourish.

Veitch’s impact on the online landscape was immediate and was even felt by the powers that be. In 2003, he made the leap to broadcast television to produce the music and animation clip show Rather Good Videos for 4Music, which was hailed as the place “where the brilliant, the cool, the uncensored and the downright weird all find a home”.

That TV crossover was short-lived, but the animation endured through the decades across multiple video and social media platforms. Veitch’s unique style eventually proved to be irresistible to corporate clients including VH1, Virgin Trains, and most memorably, the Quiznos fast-food sandwich chain, for which the Spongmonkies returned, in retooled form, to sing “We Love the Subs”.