What was up with him? Opie/Oaf seemed a pretty inoffensive sort of guy, although the way he spoke and his facial expressions often made me suspect he was drunk or mildly retarded. Did they have some sort of backstory that would explain Punchy’s merciless smackdowns in commercial after commercial? When I was a kid, I preferred Kool-Aid over Hawaiian Punch specifically because the Kool-Aid guy caused some property damage but did not physically assault people who wanted to try his product.
I think the Hawaiian, Punchy, is just kind of a bully or a joker with a cruel sense of humor. The joke is “How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?” to which his dim companion always says “sure”, thinking he’s going to receive a delicious drink of the aforementioned punch but instead inavariable gets a punch from a Hawaiian. It’s like when you were a kid and your big brother asked “how’d you like a Hertz Donut?” and then punched you good in the arm, wildly exclaiming “hurts, don’ it!”
But you knew all that, didn’t you :smack:
I thought the same thing about Punchy until I saw the first commercial in the series on YouTube (I don’t know if it’s still there). In it, Punchy is playing football with “the Oaf” who, to put mildly, is a rather bad sportsman. He cheats, takes cheap shots, trods Punchy into the ground, and then gloats about it afterward. This of course is the set up for the commercial’s end when Punchy goes up to the arrogantly chuckling Oaf and asks, “How about a nice Hawaiian Punch?”
Subsequent commercials followed this template but didn’t include other examples of the Oaf’s jerkass behavior. Thus, viewers who hadn’t seen the first ad (like me) assumed Punchy was just picking on this big poor sap for no reason at all.
Punchy’s a jerk.
As a kid, I couldn’t tell he was wearing some sort of hat, so I always wondered why he had red antlers.