In 1999 Canadians received notice of a peculiar home invader who was taking over their kitchens whenever they'd switched off their lights and retired for the evening. Meet the North American House Hippo, a small hippopotamid (roughly the size of a rat) that is indigenous to Canada and to regions of the eastern United States, where it's carved out quite the ecological niche, feeding off discarded crumbs by night and nesting in shoe cupboards by day. Wherever there are opened bags of potato chips and unattended slices of toast with peanut butter, these resourceful hippos thrive, yet they are highly elusive creatures, and little was known about their habits until a short documentary was cobbled together and extensively televised at the end of the millennium. The minute-long piece showed us the nightly routine of one such hippo, as it emerged to forage for its preferred foods, and to annoy Jake the cat by flashing its (tiny, but still intimidating) tusks his way before going for a dip in his water bowl, all while voice actor Len Carlson (known for his work on The Raccoons and Care Bears) provided genial commentary. With that, a magical new world was revealed, sparking the imaginations of young Canucks all over as to what weird and wonderful delights could be lurking within the nooks and crannies of their humble households.
It all sounds just a tad fanciful, right? Anybody with their thinking cap on would have hopefully deduced that no such creature really existed, and that was precisely the point of the short. The fictitious hippo was created by visual effects team Spin Productions on behalf of Concerned Children's Advertisers, a Toronto-based organisation who specialised in producing public service announcements for young audiences on a variety of topics, including substance abuse, physical fitness, self-esteem and personal safety. "House Hippo" was conceived as a way of introducing children to the issue of media literacy, and why they couldn't automatically trust everything they see on television, no matter how accustomed they might be to regarding it as a form of authority. A hippo was chosen as the unlikely house pest because as a concept it seemed so irresistibly hilarious, but also so oddly convincing in its miniaturised form. A moose and a giraffe were considered, but in their case the artifice was just too apparent. This was a unique kind of movie magic that only the hippo could provide. Meanwhile, the format of the PSA was designed to recall a familiar staple of Canadian culture, the Hinterland Who's Who vignettes of the 1960s and 70s, a series of charming micro-documentaries commissioned by the Canadian Wildlife Service to provide introductory portraits of the country's fauna. Here's an example, focussing on one of my favourite animals:
The music of "House Hippo" differs substantially to the John Cacavas-composed flute leitmotif that accompanied Hinterland Who's Who, hinting at its more whimsical intentions, although Carlson's voiceover was intended to evoke John Livington's, giving the PSA an air of pseudo-authority that's ultimately counteracted by its epilogue. A second narrator speaks up, openly acknowledging the pretence and prompting the viewer to consider how they processed the bogus information they'd just received: "That looked really...real?! But you knew it couldn't be true, didn't you? That's why it's good to think about what you're watching on TV and ask questions, kind of like you just did." The hippo reappears on a television screen, now full-sized and restored to its natural habitat in sub-Saharan Africa, and we can see that it never actually left. The final image hints at the trickery behind the fake documentary - the hippos we were shown were indeed real, but they were extracted from stock footage, with painstaking technical wizardry employed to create the illusion that they were wandering through a nondescript kitchen and interacting with the objects therein. The intentions of the film were clearly expressed, and yet anecdotal reports abound that a lot of kids tuned out during that all-important denouement, either because they weren't fully receptive the pro-media literacy message in the first place, or because they were far too enchanted by the notion of there being tiny little hippos in their closets and wished to preserve that fantasy. Concerned Children's Advertisers had already sold them on the premise, and they weren't going to negate that by suggesting that they be boring and sensible about it at the end. As such, "House Hippo" is often cited as an example of an advertising campaign that backfired humorously, spreading misinformation when it was intended to do the exact opposite. Harmless misinformation, I suppose (well, maybe not to those kids who were inspired to leave plates peanut buttered toast on their kitchen floors and ended up attracting flies and roaches). And the PSA is remembered with tremendous affection, causing the house hippo to become a Canadian icon, a monument to an alternate reality that seemed so much more enticing than the one we were stuck with. You could argue that it actually made its point with far more potency than its creators had originally anticipated, boring its way into the hearts and souls of its viewers in order to demonstrate what a frightfully appealing beast misinformation can be. It became more of a slow-burn message, requiring its young audience to grow up and gain more perspective and wisdom on the house hippo's impact on how they had perceived their world.
"House Hippo" strikes me as being a more benign cousin to those Hula Hoops Shoks ads about the electric eels purportedly loose in Britain's water supply that had enough kids convinced that their bathrooms had become a no-go area in the Y2K. There was something eerily authoritative about that campaign to the youngsters who hadn't yet developed the ability to discern absurdist irony, and certainly nothing joyous about the thought of being zapped by a confused and disorientated knifefish the instant you turned on your taps. Whereas "House Hippo" warmly evokes the hidden magic and wonder that might be stirring in the most ostensibly banal of environments, "Shoks" gives off a distinctly grimy despair that has the world you inhabit seeming a whole lot more malevolent (as noted in my coverage of the campaign, it ultimately speaks more to the nightmarish prospect of dying alone in a 1970s high-rise apartment than being fried by an eel). But you know kids, maybe it's really a good thing that those tiny hippos weren't actually in your kitchens; in a way, they had the potential to be just as big a menace as those electric eels. If you stop to think about it, would you really want one of those things nesting around your footwear? It all ties in with the bigger picture of how we tend to perceive hippos, which constitutes a serious bit of misrepresentation in itself. In media, hippos are typically depicted as loveable softies (think George from Rainbow and Peter Potamus), and small wonder, when they look like big squishy bath toys. In actuality, they're noted for being rather violent and territorial creatures, of the sort you don't mess with if you're interested in keeping all your body parts in place. These hippos might be small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, but it's evident that their aggressive nature is still intact, with Jake the cat making what is plainly the right call in backing down from a confrontation. Now imagine if one of these little chonks had made a nest inside your shoe, and you put your foot in without checking it first. I think there's a very good prospect of you losing some of your toes in that scenario. If they were inside your house, then your parents would have been laying traps for them like nobody's business, and that wouldn't have been very fun.
The house hippo didn't just stick to his allotted range of Canada and the eastern United States. We were also alerted to his (non) existence in the UK, when local company Media Smart got their hands on the ad in the mid-00s. In addition to using their own logo at the end, their version also ran about 20 seconds shorter, removing the references to the hippo being a native of North America (in accordance with his expanded territory) and shaving off a few of the specifics, such as his weaknesses for peanut butter and pieces of string. I have memories of an even shorter version still, which dispensed with the faux documentary aspect altogether and just had the hippo roaring at Jake, with the commentary that if you see something on TV that looks real but you know it can't be, then you can consider yourself media smart.
I hadn't thought about the house hippo for years, but was recently reminded of it while watching Sophy Romvari's remarkable feature Blue Heron, which prominently incorporates the original PSA (partly to evoke the time period in which the film takes place, but also to foreshadow its own uses of non-literal storytelling). It got me pondering the unique appeal of the hippo, and that beguiling middle ground he occupies between cozy familiarity and all-out insanity. It's no surprise that it made the cultural splash that it did, for it is an immensely charming PSA, and so lovingly made. We can suspend our disbelief and buy into the internal narrative that there are tiny hippos in our households, such a joy is it to see this most preposterous of creatures blend in so convincingly with its mundane environs. The fusion of humdrum nocturnal setting and improbable imagery evokes a lovely meeting point between a dreamed state and waking reality. At the same time, we shouldn't overlook that the house hippo is a metaphor for something deeply insidious, a problem that's merely intensified with the rise of digital media, deepfakes and AI. We live in a world where the house hippos have taken over. They seemed like a cute thing to have around at the dawn of the millennium, but now you can't put your foot in any direction without having your toes messily savaged. One way or another, Canada and everywhere else has a troubling house hippo problem, and the string-stealing kitchen invader has accordingly received a new lease of life in the fake news era. Concerned Children's Advertisers are sadly no longer with us, having become Companies Committed To Kids in 2014 before closing down in 2017. But the legacy of the house hippo has lived on, with the premise being resurrected in more recent PSAs by the Ottawa-based MediaSmarts (not to be confused with the aforementioned UK-based Media Smart), encouraging children to "Break The Fake" by developing their critical thinking skills and taking the time to research what's real and what isn't. It's us against the hippos, so be careful to give your metaphorical shoe a shake before you put your foot in it.
On the subject of hippo misconceptions, I once saw a movie where it was claimed that they fart out of their mouths, but I don't think that's actually true, is it? Mind you, the same movie gave Michael Douglas kind of a silly haircut, and that can do a lot to undermine your credibility.