Hungry Hungry Hippos

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This article is about the board game. For the band, see Hungry Hungry Hippos (band).

Hungry Hungry Hippos is a board game made for young children by Hasbro of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, under the brand of its subsidiary, Milton Bradley. It was introduced in 1978.

1 Gameplay
2 Characters
3 Pop culture
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The game is playable by two to four players and is recommended by the manufacturer for children ages 3–6. The object of the game is to use the lever on the back of a player's hippopotamus to consume as many of the twenty white plastic marbles on the playing field as possible. Play ends when all of the marbles have been "eaten" by the hippos. The player who has "eaten" the most marbles wins.

The shaking of the lightweight playing field during play, particularly when children are pounding on the levers to make their hippos capture marbles, introduces a strong random element in the game. Winning is often a matter of pure luck and not of skill. In a 1990 short story published in The New Yorker (and sarcastically named after the game), Edward Allen wrote, "The object of the game [is essentially] to press your handle down again and again as fast as you can, with no rhythm, no timing, just slam-slam-slam as your hippo surges out to grab marble after marble from the game surface...."^[1]

Television ads for the game memorably featured a series of brightly-colored cartoon hippos dancing in a conga line and singing, "Hungry Hungry Hip-pos!" to the beat.

Similar children's games popular in the U.S. include Don't Break the Ice, Don't Spill the Beans, and Ants in the Pants.

[edit] Characters

There are four hippos available to play. There is Happy Hippo (pink), Henry Hippo (orange), Homer (green), and Harry (yellow). In some versions of the game, the orange hippo is replaced by a blue hippo, also named Henry. Also, in earlier versions of the commercial, there were five hippos in the conga line, the blue one being the fifth one.

[edit] Pop culture

Hungry Hungry Hippos has become a part of American pop culture:

In the animated television series The Simpsons, Homer Simpson has mentioned this game in the episode Mr. Plow while he waits for a phone call after his Mr. Plow ad has run he says "Now we play the waiting game... aw, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos". It is referenced in another episode that features an apparently similar game (owned by Bart) called Ravenous Ravenous Rhinos. An episode of the series alludes to the game in its title, "Hungry Hungry Homer."

The game was also mentioned in the film Donnie Darko. When Donnie is seeing his psychiatrist, she asks him about his childhood and why he is unhappy with his parents, and the following exchange takes place:
Donnie Darko: "My parents didn't get me what I wanted for Christmas."
Dr. Lilian Thurman: "What did you want?"
Donnie Darko: "Hungry Hungry Hippos."
Dr. Lilian Thurman: "And how did you feel, being denied these hungry, hungry hippos? "
Donnie Darko: "Regret."^[2]

In the Family Guy episode "A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas", the character of Stewie gets Hungry Hungry Hippos as a Christmas present.
In its April 21, 1999 issue, faux-newspaper The Onion featured an article titled, "Hasbro Pledges Additional 30 Marbles For Hippo Hunger Relief."
The game was referenced in Season 2 of the stop-motion animation television series Robot Chicken, in a segment in which Hungry Hungry Hippos is adapted into an action-packed movie.

In the episode "Stolen Vows" of the ABC comedy Big Day, the bride-to-be, Alice, gambles away all of her wedding gifts while playing Hungry Hungry Hippos with her sister and maid of honor, Becca.
There is a rock 'n' roll combo called Hungry Hungry Hippos from the San Francisco Bay Area.
A game called Hungry, Hungry Oprahs (which was Hungry Hungry Hippos with the hippos replaced by Oprah Winfreys) was once featured on The Man Show. (The hosts' dislike of Oprah was a recurring joke on the show.)
The rapper Project Pat says, in one lyric, "I'm hungry for cheese, like hungry, hungry hippo."
An X-Play skit involves Professor X and Magneto challenging each other to several board games, one of which is Hungry Hungry Hippos.

[edit] References

^ Allen, Edward. "Hungry Hungry Hippos," The New Yorker. 07/30/90. 30. The story is about Allen's experiences the year after he graduated college, much of which was spent watching television and TV commercials.
^ Memorable Quotes from Donnie Darko (2001). Various. Retrieved on 2006-11-20.