Punch-Out!! Wii King Hippo's Story Commercial Transcript & Analysis

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - HEY HIPPO, YOUR BLENDER SUCKS!

In a week about as quick to end as Luigi's boxing career (see Game & Watch Gallery 4 on your own time), we are now at the final day of KoopaTV's Punch-Out!! Week 2025! We have one last commercial to transcribe and analyse: King Hippo's!

Punch-Out!! Wii King Hippo Commercial Transcript

[King Hippo] Grrr! [King Hippo is in his backyard, making growling noises as he assaults a punching bag hanging on a tree outside of his humble house. A lower-thirds label of “KING HIPPO Retired W.V.B.A. Boxer” appears]
Do I miss boxing? Do I miss the the roar of the crowd, the people screaming my name, autograph seekers, all the excitement? [King Hippo is sitting indoors on his couch, though the footage cuts to King Hippo's overhead chops knocking Little Mac out in NES graphics, labelled “LITTLE MAC VS. KING HIPPO 1989”]
No, no no... what's past is past. My future is bright. [King Hippo is seen throwing a basketball in his yard but missing the hoop.]
I got my... my blender endorsement.
[Informercial King Hippo] And what is a Hippo Shake without a little bit of meat? [King Hippo has an island shirt in the kitchen standing next to a blender. At the bottom of the screen reads www.HippoBlender.com with a flashing phone number, 1-877-FIT-4-KING]
[King Hippo] I moved here back in uh... '94 you know, after I retired. [King Hippo is driving through a shoddy downtrodden town in his car.]
It's really like a community, you know.
[Community Inhabitant 1] Believe it or not he's a soft-spoken person, but, that rage is still there. [Community Inhabitant 1 is an older balding darker-skinned man.]
[King Hippo] GRRR GRR GRR GRR. [The footage cuts to King Hippo growling at the punching bag in his yard again before cutting to another community inhabitant.]
[Community Inhabitant 2] Everybody's so used to him now, so nobody really pays too much mind to him, not like before, you know... he was up there. [Community Inhabitant 2 is another man, wearing a black baseball cap with paler skin, tattoos, and a camouflage vest, and sitting on some stairs.]
[King Hippo] There's a wall I got some... some of my memorabilia here, when I won the belt, right there, you get that, haha look at that... grrr! [King Hippo is touring the inside of his house, and he really wanted the camera to get a shot of the photo of him wearing the championship belt.]
That's my first pair of gloves.
This is my uh... my curio case... where I keep all my... curios here.
GRRR NOM GRRR NOM GRR NOM... [King Hippo is devouring a piece of meat while standing up directly over a chair]
And this is my, uh, my peace garden. Come out here and I just uh... sit down, and bliss out. [King Hippo shows off his peace garden, which has a distinct lack of vegetation or greens.]
I'll be honest with you, I have made a lot of money as a boxer, and I put every penny of it, every last penny of it, into that blender. [King Hippo returns to his couch indoors.]
And just letting it ride, you know!
[Informercial King Hippo] You are going to turn it on...! ........Carl? [The power goes out while the infomercial is playing, despite music playing.]
[King Hippo] What do you mean a recall, what is...a complete recall? [King Hippo is on the phone, very frustrated.]
[Interviewer] What if I told you you had another shot at the title against Little Mac? [The interviewer's voice is playing while King Hippo walks into a pawn shop that buys and sells anything of value.]
[King Hippo] I hadn't thought about that... that'd be good, that'd be real good... [King Hippo is trying to bliss out in his peace garden]
[Heckler] HEY HIPPO, YOUR BLENDER SUCKS! [An unidentified white male heckler is driving by King Hippo's garden from their white car and screaming at him.]
[King Hippo] You know I'm... I'm ready for a comeback. I am. I need this. King is back. Long live the king. [King Hippo is seen leaving the pawn shop with a cheap crown on his head.]
[Narrator] They're coming back! 12 classic characters plus new ones in the all new Punch-Out!! for Wii! [Cuts to game footage of Little Mac punching King Hippo's belly, punching Von Kaiser, Star Punching Disco Kid, and punching away Glass Joe, then cutting to the Punch-Out!! Wii logo and then the general Wii logo, with the ii letters making a noise as they bow to the camera.]

Punch-Out!! Wii King Hippo Commercial Analysis

King Hippo is quite different than who has been featured up to this point. First...

The Timeline

Nothing in this video changes the basic timeline that Little Mac became World Circuit Champion in 1987, lost his title to King Hippo in 1989, and then retired in 1994. What we did learn is that King Hippo also retired in 1994, and he moved his permanent residence from Hippo Island (in the South Pacific) to a lower-class community somewhere in, presumably, the United States. King Hippo likely was a high-performing boxer between 1989 and 1994, since he claims to have made a lot of money as a boxer, and you don't do that by being a loser. (Just ask Super Macho Man or Disco Kid after Little Mac first beat them in Punch-Out!! Wii.)

King Hippo's Blender

King Hippo begins the commercial stating that his future is bright and that his boxing past is in the past. He has a “blender endorsement”, which means he probably isn't the inventor of the blender or the manager of the business, but he is likely an investor in it. (He is the one giving the endorsement in return for equity in the business... and as part of that deal, there is a brand-marketing campaign around using his King-ness as a website and phone alias. Shark Tank does that sort of thing, sometimes.) That's how he can just let it ride, because it's someone else's business.

I don't recommend calling this phone number or visiting that website.
I actually wanted to acquire the website and have it redirect to KoopaTV, but someone else is squatting it.
hippoblender.org is available, though! And Squarespace suggests giraffeblender.com as a consolation!

Unfortunately, during the course of the commercial's filming, there was a complete recall on the Hippo Blenders, which is quite bad for King Hippo's investment. And he said he put every penny into investing into that blender. So now his money is gone and his endorsement is a disaster, including his reputation. That's why random people are heckling him on the street.

King Hippo's Boxing Interest

King Hippo claims he doesn't miss boxing, but he has a punching bag in his yard and the first thing he shows the interviewer is his memorabilia wall of boxing stuff.

Not shown in this particular screenshot: Where King Hippo USED to hang his belt.

To be fair, the interviewer was the one asking King Hippo about boxing, so maybe he wouldn't have done that if he wasn't prompted.

The members of the community portray King Hippo as secretly angry despite his allegedly calm demeanor. I think King Hippo took his blender endorsement falling apart with the recall as well as he could, retreating to his peace garden and nomming on food.

I think King Hippo is the most competent of the three boxers shown at boxing. He certainly has more interest than Great Tiger did. And it's established that, while Piston Hondo is the most stuck-in-the-past about his boxing career, he's not really much of a threat. At least he's keeping in shape with that punching bag (probably better than punching steak).

Speaking of that interviewer, he seems to be the one that set up this whole “everyone gets out of retirement” thing to begin with. He got in touch with Little Mac and Doc Louis. And based on this commercial, King Hippo wasn't even aware that Little Mac was getting out of retirement until the interviewer mentioned it. And yet Doc Louis already knew that Piston Hondo, Great Tiger, and King Hippo would be participating. Either Little Mac, Doc Louis, and the interviewer just assumed that Mac's old foes from over 15 years ago would all say yes and agree to fight him again, or Little Mac's commercial was filmed after the commercials for Piston Hondo, Great Tiger, and King Hippo, making these last three days of Punch-Out!! Week actually a prequel to Mac's part. Just who is this guy? How much power does he have? Is he part of the W.V.B.A.? Or is there something more to him...


Well, that is the end of Punch-Out!! Week, and the end of KoopaTV publishing articles with regularity. Again. Which was your favourite commercial and analysis? Will you go play some Punch-Out!! now? Ludwig sure enjoyed it!