The iconic song “Hello ma Baby” from Looney Tunes' One Froggy Evening (1955), where it’s sung by the character Michigan J. Frog🐸, was the first popular song about the telephone and was about a man dating a lady over the phone without having ever met her. This playful novelty song originally came out in 1899 and was nearly 60 years old when it hit the cartoon stage. The repeated use of "hello" in the chorus ("Hello, ma baby, hello, ma honey, hello, ma ragtime gal") mirrors how people were using the word as a standard telephone greeting, popularized in the late 1870s and 1880s after the telephone’s invention.