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Pique'n'yer interest

A brief history of mascots

Miga — A killer whale turns into a black bear with fins, and looks vaguely like a panda. The fin sprouts out of the top of the head like a lock of hair, reminiscent of Alphalpha or Ed Grimley.

Sumi — A thunderbird with the furry legs and face of a bear who wears a poncho and a stylized killer whale hat.

Quatchi — A sasquatch who dreams of becoming a goalie someday. Expected to sign with the Maple Leafs at any moment.

Mukmuk — A toque-wearing Vancouver Island marmot that everybody loves, but who is destined to play a supporting role for Miga, Sumi and Quatchi.

Love ’em or hate ’em — and there are wildly differing opinions between children and adults — these are our mascots for 2010, and they have a huge role to play. Not only are they the friendly faces that will welcome the world to Canada and B.C., and hopefully capture the imagination of children around the world in the process, they are also supposed to rake in about $46 million in plush toy sales and other merchandise. Personally I’ll reserve judgment on our choice of mascots until summer of 2010 when the final receipts are in. I hope they sell a billion dollars worth.

So what’s with the mascots anyway? How did they become a staple of pro sports, and, by extension, the Olympics and Paralympics?

 

History

A mascot is essentially a person, place or thing believed to bring good luck. The word itself comes from the French slang “mascotte” which essentially means “witch”.

There’s no telling what mascot came first, but every tribal facemask, every totem pole, and every lucky animal that ever traveled with an army can be considered a mascot.

Their inclusion in professional sports is long and storied. Greeks in early Olympiads are believed to have brought statues of their gods and lucky animals to the first Olympiads almost 2,800 years ago. Every animal ever painted on a shield or crest is a kind of mascot, and the same is true for the Killer Whale on the Canucks uniforms today.

In the beginning of modern sports, which really started at the collegiate level, mascots were once real animals that embodied traits like fierceness, strength, and resilience. When the risks of keeping animals like wolves, bulls, badgers and mountain lions became apparent, teams eventually came to the conclusion that people dressed up as animals are probably safer.

These days virtually every sports team has a mascot on the payroll. Their job is to entertain the crowd during stops in the game and to rally their fans from the sidelines. They’re also a huge hit with kids and help draw families to sporting events. In some cases they can be highly profitable.

The first modern Olympic mascot was a lame little doll called Schuss that was the unofficial mascot of the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, France. It looked like a tomato on skis. Since then every Olympics has had a mascot, with the exception of the 1972 Winter Games.

Mascots are now in the employ of amusement parks, fast food chains, corporations (e.g. the Geico lizard), and even major political parties. The official mascot of the American Democratic Party is the donkey, while the Republicans are partial to elephants.

 

Greatest mascots ever

Done well, mascots are gold for a sports franchise or theme park like Disney World. When done really, really well, the mascots become so popular that they have a following of their own.

Although there are a lot of great mascots to choose from, a few stand head and shoulders above the rest. In baseball, when games can go five hours or more and the play is anything but fluid, the mascots are especially good.

One of the most notable modern mascots is the Philadelphia Phillies Phanatic, who has entertained crowds for almost 30 years in a city where fans once booed Santa Claus off the field. He is hugely entertaining, mildly offensive at times, and is utterly fearless when trying to throw opposing teams off their game and messing with umpires. He’s been thrown out of more games than Tommy Lasorda.

Next up would have to be the San Diego Chicken, the first pro mascot who started an arms race in 1974. At the turn of the millennia The Sporting News selected the Chicken as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Sports of the 20 th Century, alongside Muhammed Ali, Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, Wayne Gretzky, Joe Montana and others.

Other great mascots include the Milwaukee Brewers’ running sausages, Youppi (gone with the Montreal Expos; the first mascot ever ejected from a game), Go the Gorilla from the Pheonix Suns, Harvey the Hound from the Calgary Flames (had his tongue ripped out by an opposing coach), and the Anaheim Angels Rally Monkey.

 

Worst mascots ever?

In a way the pressure was off for the 2010 mascots before it even started. In Montreal in 1976 our mascot was a beaver-shaped pillow with a red sash around it. In Calgary in 1988 our mascots were a pair of polar bears with cowboy hats and boots.

We’re also coming after the 2006 Turin Games when the mascots were a snowball and a block of ice.