Hoops &
Yoyo

From Bob Holt's Basement to Your Christmas Tree

The story of Hoops & Yoyo begins in Hallmark artist Bob Holt's basement in 2001 — a green bunny, some animation software, a Fourth of July e-card assignment. For the e-card, Bob made the bunny pink, gave it cat ears, and named the resulting character Hoops. When Hoops needed a sidekick, Bob brought back the original green bunny and named it Yoyo. The voices were recorded and sped up in a Hallmark studio — Bob as Yoyo, fellow artist and collaborator Mike Adair as Hoops. "There's something subversive in their wisecracking anarchy," as the hoops&yoyo wiki puts it, "but wholesome too." Their e-card dialogue was never scripted — it came spontaneously from the minds of Bob Holt and Mike Adair, two Hallmark artists making each other laugh in a recording studio.

The characters became a franchise: thousands of e-cards, a holiday CD (Jingle Jingle Wiggle, 2005), sound-enabled greeting cards, plush toys, TV appearances on Hallmark Channel, and ultimately a CBS Christmas special in 2011 — Hoops & Yoyo Ruin Christmas. The Keepsake ornament collection ran from 2006 through 2014, producing eleven entries that included Magic sound features, light-up laptops, and the full range of holiday themes that Hoops and Yoyo could approach at maximum volume. For anyone who received a Hoops & Yoyo e-card in the late 2000s — and many millions did — these ornaments are the physical artifact of that digital encounter, the chaos of the speeded-up voices made permanent and hung on the tree.

The Guys Who Made the Internet Smile

Hoops & Yoyo arrived at exactly the right moment — the mid-2000s, when e-cards were the primary way people sent digital greetings, when Hallmark.com was the most trafficked destination for holiday and birthday messages online, and when a pink cat and green rabbit speaking in sped-up voices over a cartoon background was genuinely novel. The characters resonated because their humor was specific: not polished or scripted, but spontaneous and anarchic, the dialogue coming directly from the unscripted interactions of Bob Holt and Mike Adair in a recording studio. "There's something subversive in their wisecracking anarchy, but wholesome too."

The Keepsake ornament collection captures the characters at the height of that cultural moment. The 2006 debut puts them on a laptop — the device through which most people encountered them in the first place. The 2008 "Cell-ebrating Christmas" puts them on cell phones, the next communication device that defined the era. The 2011 entries arrive the same year Hoops & Yoyo Ruin Christmas premiered on CBS. The Spanish-language "Regalos! Regalos! Regalos!" (2012) and "Es Navidad!" (2011) reflect the characters' multilingual appeal. The "Cocoalicious Fun" finale in 2014 closes the collection with a word that could only belong to these two.

Eleven ornaments, nine years, the complete Hoops & Yoyo Keepsake collection. For anyone who sent or received a Hoops & Yoyo e-card in the late 2000s, these ornaments are the physical artifact of that digital memory — the chaotic, caffeinated, speeded-up voices made permanent on the tree.

Tips for the Collection

• 01
  Position the Magic Sound entries where the button can be pressed. Multiple entries in the collection feature sound — the 2006 light-and-sound laptop, the 2008 Cell-ebrating Christmas, the 2009 Yahooooo!, the 2010 Goodies for Santa, and others. Display them at arm's reach on the tree. A Hoops & Yoyo ornament that plays audio is significantly more entertaining than one that doesn't, and pressing the button is the experience the ornament is designed for.
• 02
  The 2012 "Regalos! Regalos! Regalos!" is the collection's most distinctive entry. Spanish-language Hoops & Yoyo reflects the franchise's multilingual reach — the characters' e-cards were translated into six languages at their peak. This entry stands out in any collection display as the most unexpected title and the one that tells the broadest story about how far the duo's appeal reached.
• 03
  The 2006 debut and 2014 finale are the collection's bookends — display them together. "A Christmas Greeting" (2006, light-up laptop) and "Cocoalicious Fun" (2014, final entry) tell the arc of the collection: how it began with the characters on the device that made them famous, and how it ended with a word ("Cocoalicious") that perfectly encapsulates everything Hoops & Yoyo ever were.
• 04
  This collection is the ideal gift for anyone who was online in the late 2000s. The Hoops & Yoyo e-card era produced a specific kind of digital nostalgia — the memory of opening a holiday e-card and having a pink cat and green rabbit yell at you in sped-up voices. These ornaments are the physical artifact of that memory. For anyone who knows the duo, the ornament is immediate recognition. For anyone who doesn't — they will press the sound button and find out.
• 05
  All 11 Hoops & Yoyo ornaments, 2006 through 2014, are at Already Christmas. The complete collection — every speeded-up voice, every holiday chaos scene, every Yahooooo! — is in the collection. All eleven here.