Just What IS That?

Today I was watching the U.S. gymnastics championships on TV and there was a lot of talk about the London 2012 Summer Olympics and it got me to thinking about Olympic mascots. A couple of months ago the new mascots for the London 2010 Summer Olympics, Wenlock and Mandeville, were unveil. What the hell are these things? According to organizers, they are fashioned after droplets of steel used to build a new stadium in London for the event. Is it just me or have Olympic mascots just gotten weirder and weirder over the years?

The use of an mascot to first raise money for Olympic organizers began in Los Angeles (surprise, surprise) with the 1984 Summer Olympics and Sam the Eagle (there were Olympic mascot before San but they had not been used for marketing purposes). At least we could tell what the mascot was. Some years have been good. For the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics there was Howdy and Hidi, polar bear siblings. For the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics there was Hodori, a tiger. For the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics there was Powder (a snowshoe hare), Copper (a coyote) and Coal (an American black bear). But it seems that every couple of Olympic years the mascot has been morphed into something that isn’t even identifiable.

Remember the 1996 for the Atlanta Summer Olympics? The mascot was Izzy. To this day nobody knows who or what Izzy is. And for the 2006 Torino Winter Olympics there was Neve (a snowball) and Gliz (an ice cube.). Really, an ice cube as an Olympic mascot? The Fuwa from the 2008 Beijing Summery Olympics (supposedly good luck dolls but really just look down right strange) are now known as “The Curse of the Fuwa.” (see story at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/2168554/Beijing-Olympic-Fuwa-mascots-have-cursed-China-in-unlucky-2008.html) And what the heck were the mascots for the 2004 Athens Summer Olympic? Named Athena and Phevos, nobody seems to know what the Olympic organizers were going for that year (they have been some references to them look like a certain part of the male anatomy with feet).

Here’s the background for the 2012 London Olympic mascots: Wenlock was named after the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock that helped inspire Pierre de Coubertin to launch the modern Olympics, and Mandeville was inspired by the Buckinghamshire town of Stoke Mandeville, where the Paralympics were founded. There is always a story behind the mascot that is designed to make the Olympics relevant to the whole world. But I’m not sure how droplets of steel do that. Anyone? Anyone?