[3] John grew up "surrounded by tractors, cows, and horses", and has stated that as a child he wished to be a limousine driver and a fighter pilot.

[3][5] When the video was unearthed by BuzzFeed News in 2019, John said, "at the time, I thought this sort of thing was funny, but really it was stupid and tasteless, and I regret having ever done it.

[6] The idea for Blippi came to John after moving back to Ellensburg and witnessing his then two-year-old nephew viewing low-quality videos on YouTube.

Blippi has been described as "an adult human man who dresses up in bright clothes and dances around America's deserted soft play centres for the benefit of YouTube".

Writing for the magazine Current Affairs, Nathan Robinson criticized the videos for their lack of depth, calling his universe "thin and dull".