London unveils creepy-looking mascots for 2012 Olympics

By Doli
in The Sporting Arena

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Grand Master

Doli

Posted
Posted

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When the official logo of the 2012 London Olympics was released three years ago, the odd puzzle-piece design

was the object of so much scorn that organizers were desperate to avoid similar criticism when they unveiled the mascots

for the Games on Wednesday. With the introduction of Wenlock and Mandeville (above), London 2012 organizers realized

their goal. The criticism of the mascots won't be similar to the complaints about the logo. No, they'll be much, much worse.

Look, I don't know what to say. Olympic mascots have always been the object of scorn (remember Izzy?), but these two,

uh, things take the absurdity to a whole new level. There's a complicated backstory to the characters which was written by

a children's author. It explains why the mascots have one eye (it's a camera lens to see the world) and yellow lights on tops

of their heads (an homage to London taxicabs), but fails to tell the tale of why they look like early rejects from a Pixar movie.

Plus, the fact that some details are explained only makes me wonder about the things that aren't. Why does the one on the left

look like it's wearing an oven mitt? Where are their feet? What, are both those design features a metaphor for how we can't run

away from global warming?

Officials boasted that focus groups of children helped form the designs of the mascots, which makes total sense because this

looks exactly like something a bunch of second-graders would create as a class project. It's like Wenlock and Mandeville were

pieced together from every child's suggestion. "They should have one eye!" "It'd be cool if they did karate!" "Make them fly!"

There was no filter. Instead of simple (like the only good Olympic mascot in history, Barcelona's Cobi) London went for a design

as complicated as can be.

The natural defense of the mascots is that they're not designed for adults, but for the children who will convince adults to buy

them a bunch of merchandise with said mascots. That's a cop-out. Pandering to children isn't an excuse for an uninspired design.

The aforementioned Pixar caters to kids, yet its films still resonate with the older set.

Wenlock is named after Much Wenlock, a village in Shropshire which held an event in the 19th century which inspired the modern

Games. Mandeville is named after the hospital at which the Paralympic Games were founded. Though both sound like Tolkein

characters, the names are quite good and are the only thing that makes the mascots distinctly British.

London 2012 released a video explaining the pair's orgins as well. Somehow, it makes them look even weirder than before:

(sorry for the format of the text, copy and paste job from yahoo)

Yahoo

.... AHHH HAHAHAHAHA...AHHHHH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.... wait there is a video also .... AAHHHHHHHHH HAHAHAHHA cant breathe (gasp) HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA IT'S SO SAD HAHAHAHAHA

Grand Master

macrosslover

Posted
Posted

*facepalm* Can we not have anything that looks good for the olympics? The logo is ugly, The mascots are horrible.

don't worry it's universal. the same thing happened here in atlanta. Our Izzit, wtf the name was, mascot for the olympics was :blink: however the special olympics mascot Blaze I think, a phoenix, was epic.

Grand Master

Fred Derf Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

i thought ours were dumb, but props london for one upping vancouver!

The Vancouver ones weren't completely dumb. At least they were designed to sell merchandise to Japanese tourists and it tied into the whole indigenous theme. Who would want to buy merchandise with these mascots on them?

For those that missed the 2010 Winter Olympics:

Grand Master

Nick H. Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
Posted

I was sitting here, looking at the picture and thinking, "great, we'll be the laughing stock again" and then I thought of something:

Why do we need mascots? Aren't they just "living" logos for something that is already represented by a logo?

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