To this day, I can't understand what the Sixers were thinking when they came up with Hip-Hop. I can only imagine the original meeting that birthed the bunny - a vain, impossible attempt to create a mascot that's aggressive yet approachable, edgy yet lovable. I can almost hear some corporate drone pitching the winning-but-woefully-misguided concept:
What about a rabbit named Hip-Hop? Get it? He's a bunny, but he's also, like, super cool and into rap, yo.
As far as bad ideas go, Hip-Hop ranks up there with Mike Tyson's face ink.
This will put it in better perspective: My godson, Nicholas, is 9 years old. He's a sports fanatic and a Sixers devotee - so much so that he recently attended a weeklong Sixers basketball camp for kids. Not only did he play hoops all day long, but he also met some of the Sixers. He couldn't have been happier.
When I asked about his favorite players, he provided detailed analysis on Andre Iguodala and Thaddeus Young. But when I asked what he thinks about Hip-Hop, he didn't say anything at first. Then he shrugged.
"Eh," he said.
That was it. Just "eh." From a kid who would get a Sixers tattoo if his mother, my cousin, would let him. (She's such a prude that way.) If you can't get a dedicated fan like my godson to dig the bunny, then the marketing battle has surely been fought and lost.
For that reason and so many others, Hip-Hop makes our list of the top 10 Lamest Mascots in Pro Sports:
