Puppy Bowl
An annual tradition on Animal Planet, the Puppy Bowl is the Super Bowl WITH PUPPIES! ...That's pretty much all there is to it. Those who aren't interested in the main event during Super Bowl Sunday can watch puppies play with football-themed toys on a faux football field for two hours, complete with a (human) referee and color commentary.
From the second Puppy Bowl on, there's also a Kitty Halftime Show featuring a plethora of kittens playing with various toys, like balls, lasers, and various springy, bouncy, moving knick-knacks. Each show ends with a huge shower of confetti. Later installments have added new gimmicks like a canine tailgating section, a hamster-run blimp, cheerleader squads made up of bunnies, chicks, or piglets, a 'Kiss Cam', and a cockatiel with a Twitter account.
- Early Installment Weirdness: The first Puppy Bowl didn't have a Kitty Halftime Show.
- Everything's Cuter With Kittens: The Kitty Halftime Show.
- Everything's Precious With Puppies
- Product Placement: The arena is plastered with banner ads, and before each commercial break, they like to remind you of the various products they're hawking. The Kitty Halftime Show, for instance, always ends with a huge burst of confetti, followed by briefly showing the ref vacuuming. Puppy Bowl VII had the referee regularly taking a break to enjoy breath mints.
- Puppy Bowl VIII had the breath mint breaks returning. The referee also left to seek a missing flag with the dogs from the sponsoring movie, Treasure Buddies.
- Reaction Shot
- Rule of Cute
- No Hoper Repeat
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Awesome?: The commentary tries so hard to make it sound like the puppies are actually trying to score touchdowns...