Bizarre exercise video with poodles catches fire on Internet 10 years later
Apr 5, 2014, 10:44 PM | Updated: 10:44 pm
An odd Panasonic exercise video from 2004 has come back into the Internet’s consciousness in a big way.
The clip features Californian-born Japanese model Mariko Takahashi doing an aerobic exercise flanked by several dress-up poodles, the Daily Mail reports.
It’s an odd enough visual, but for some reason, Takahashi hams it up even further with artificial “Popeye”-like arms and legs. The model leads the video like nothing is out of the ordinary, however.
The Daily Mail reports the video was produced ahead of the 2004 Summer Olympics.
And 10 years later, it has become a viral hit.
The clip, made by art director and commercial film director Nagi Noda, is a word-for-word copy of a workout video made by motivational speaker and 90s fitness celebrity Susan Powter.
The poodles are, of course, humans, who had dog heads added later using CGI, and were used by Noda as she found the way poodle fur is groomed to resemble human muscles.
The workout begins roughly 50 seconds into the following clip.
