vancouver 2010: mascotarded.

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic people just “unveiled” the mascots for the next winter games. Ok, so let’s talk Olympics: Citius, Altius, Foritus and all that. “Imagine there’s no countries…it’s easy if you try”. The triumph of the human spirit embodied by the noble struggle that is… the luge. Anyway, the Olympics are cool and we all get that. I’ll be up at 4:00am to watch the Ladies Long Program with the best of ‘em. Plus, let’s face it – the Olympics are the biggest sport event in the history of the universe with even bigger brand dollars attached. The games come and the whole world watches. With that in mind, will somebody please, please… please tell me why Olympic mascots always look so stupid?

I was hoping that Vancouver wouldn’t cave in to convention and come up with some kind of plush killer whale holding a totem pole. Now I’m wishing they had. Instead, they went for a Japanimation/Haida mashup. It’s a little like Astroboy’s spirit animal does the Super G. We have a trio of Pokémon left-overs made up not just of the stereotypical animals you’d expect, but from different body parts of the stereotypical animals you’d expect:

I know these designers have to please a lot of people with completely contradictory interests. I’m sure there’s no one perfect mascot solution. But was the best we could come up with really a hockey playing sasquatch in blue ear-muffs?

I went to the source of the randomness and could find no explanation, other than that the sasquatch is called Quatchi and he wants to be a famous goalie. While I was poking around I took the “Which Mascot Are You Like?” quiz. Through it’s series of in-depth questions, it was revealed that I’m most like Miga – the half whale/half bear skunk looking thing. Not because I secretly have contempt for the childless Japanese super-inventor who designed me, but because my favourite food is wild salmon and my dream is to “land a corked 720 in the half-pipe”.

Mascot? Mascdon’t.