The Grouch

The Grouch is a freeware software patch written by Eric Shapiro for the Trash icon in classic Mac OS. The graphics were produced by Ken Hornak.

History
The patch first appeared in 1989 as an INIT (later called an extension) for System 6. When the Trash is emptied, an animated version of from  appears, singing "Oh I love trash!" or "I love it because it's trash!" The Grouch was featured at the annual MacHack conference, which Shapiro later won in 1991 for creating VideoBeep. Unlike VideoBeep, which was sold commercially, The Grouch remained freeware as Shapiro was unable to reach an agreement with the licensing staff of Sesame Street.

Version 2.0 of the extension added support for color in 1990. A standalone application of version 2.5(B2) was included with the MacHack CD-ROM in 1991. The application did not require interaction with the Finder desktop and was released after parents requested a version that did not reward children for throwing files in the Trash.