Little Bunny Foo Foo
hopping through the forest
scooping up the field mice and
…
Every once in a while, I start an informal survey of my friends, or whomever I happen to have cornered at the time. How did they learn this song?
Among the people I know, it close to being split along gender lines.
Girls learned “Bopping them on the head”
Boys learned “Popping off their heads”
So how did you learn this? And if you feel like it, what gender are you?
I learned Bopping them on the head, in the Mid West, female.
So far, “8 boppings on the head” and “1 jizzing” (same as Ike & Tina’s wedding night), so while not a scientific sample it looks like popping off their heads is a wee minority.
I only ever heard “bopping.” I did not hear this as a child, rather when I was in my 30’s or 40’s, in the Midwest (I’m male).
Google gives about twice as many hits for “bopping” (or “boppin”) as for “popping” (or “poppin”), and it’s clear from looking at the results that many of the “popping/poppin” hits have those words somewhere besides the lyrics (e.g., it’s “bopping them on the head” but there’s also a reference to, say, popping popcorn). Furthermore, many of the ones with “popping/poppin” still say “popping them on the head” rather than “popping off their heads.” I suspect the latter is a result of the human tendency to shorten things in speech, especially in a case like this when there’s one too many syllables to fit the meter smoothly.
So it’s clear to me that “bopping” is correct, and only Godless Communist Pervert Terrorists say “popping off their heads.”
