Hip Hop is dead.
The 76ers anthropomorphized rabbit mascot named Hip Hop who came on the scene in the Allen Iverson era to the thrill of nobody has gone the way of the Dodo bird.
The new owners of the 76ers surveyed their season ticket holders and were looking for ways to improve the game-night experience. (One might suggest the best way to do that right now is to have games.) What fans wanted was the rabbit mascot to disappear, like Jimmy Hoffa.
And so it is done, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. But don’t think that the 76ers will be without a mascot.To spare the sensibilities of the one or two children who weren’t scared to death by the rabbit, the team will say that Hip Hop fell in love, married and moved away to start a family. Apparently, it either was that or announce that they were going to boil him in a pot on a really big stove in a remake of “Fatal Attraction”….
The task of coming up with a replacement for Hip Hop will fall to two firms specializing in the business. One is Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, which began as the workshop of the late creator of the Muppets. The other is Raymond Entertainment Group, whose founder is Dave Raymond, the original Phillie Phanatic.Do the 76ers really need a mascot? Well, as long as it isn’t an anthropomorphized cheese steak, we’ll give it a chance.