Did you see this?
The new mascots for the London Olympics.
Wenlock, left, the London 2012 Olympic mascot, and Mandeville, the Paraolympic mascot.
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the Royals ‘about???
It’s not just you. A blob with an eye. It’s what you get when you don’t want there to be any differences or distinguishing characteristics. Oh, England!
…thinking the rainbow in the background is appropriate…
Mascots? Those look like something from a Jules Verne novel. What was the London Organizing Committee thinking?
These are very creepy … and absurd! Usually mascots are cartoon characters with big “Disney” eyes and cute faces that don’t scare children. These have only one eye in a featureless white expanse. No one will find them cute or friendly or anything they can relate to.
I suspect this is political correctness gone completely crazy. Perhaps the one eye was to avoid “speciesism.”
Ah, the Left.
I think the idea is, if your mascot is totally divorced from any created reality that human beings experience,
then there’s no reason for anybody to get offended.
On the other hand, the things are bipedal. Won’t quadrupeds feel excluded?
At last! Something weirder and uglier than Izzy, the mascot for the 1996 Games here in Atlanta.
Not to worry! They are on loan from the LA Archdiocese, I hear.
Call to Action will be jealous that the Olympics have better puppets than them.
Reminds me of the giant eye in Lord of the Rings.
This is the culture that gave us the Teletubbies. Should we expect more???…
Genderless, sexless, featureless pseudo-monitor-like faces: perfect political correctness for the New World Order. Or perhaps prototypes of future drones produced by stem cell research.
They are aliens…not mascots. Perhaps illegal aliens?
They remind me of the one-eyed space monster from the Japanese TV series “Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot”, which was dubbed into English and which I used to watch as a kid. http://www.ultramanstuff.com/images/Sokko2website.jpg
I first read about this on one of the popular UK tabloid websites—the comments were hilarious! (though uncharitable just a tad, ;) )
Supposedly they did a study that came out that kids of today no longer relate to furry animals, so they came up with this. Now they have ugly mascots to go with an ugly logo. What more can they want?
Looks like an LSD trip or a “spirit” of V2 Mass. Not like there’s much of a difference between the two anyway…
They look like they have for heads a TV with an eye in the middle – perhaps for “Watch This” or “We’re Watching You” , not sure what the lobster claws mean.
My daughter says perhaps the orange guy has a lock on his costume, the blue one is wearing diapers???
I digress
So apparently the logo costs 400,000 pounds, they claim these characters can morph into other characters (the fix-all in cartoons) and were created because ‘children no longer want fuzzy, cuddly and cute characters’. Who knows?
I think these guys should know about this.
Yeah, it’s creepy.
Looks like Mandeville wet himself.
I read, on someone’s blog, that they were American teletubbies! Our’s are much cuter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYP56ziEU4
Creeeeepy.
Seems more appropriate for “dental hygene” week.
I find the names funnier than anything else. Wenlock and Mandeville. If only they threw in a Cholmondeley or something I think we’d be all set.
“appalling computerized Smurfs for the iPhone generation”
“Wardrobe Malfunction”
I think this was designed by the same guy who said the Pope should hand out condoms. Now it all seems to make sense.
Seems more appropriate for “dental hygene” week.
As a dentist I can tell you, I’d never have something this bizarre on in an ad ;-)
Makes you wonder why can’t we recognize beauty and weirdness anymore?
They’re obnoxious and *unathletic* – I agree w/ comments that their intent is to offend no one… yet I’m given to understand there will be a gigantic mosque constructed near the olympic village.
My daughter suggests the Lion and the Unicorn . . . much more British, more noble, more athletic, more appropriate . . . I guess that’s just too simple and straightforward.
“Dieu et mon Droit”
Or any of the characters from The Wind in the Willows — nobody would mess with Mr. Badger.
I wondered what Gordon Brown was doing after the elections…
Looking at them all I can say is
Ia! Iä! Cthulu Fatgh’n!
Yog-Sogoth! The goat of a thousand young!
(I speak as instructed. My daughter understands these things.)
“I find the names funnier than anything else. Wenlock and Mandeville.”
Actually, the names are the only sensible features of these revolting creatures. Much Wenlock is a small town in Shropshire (west of England) where an annual athletics competition inspired Pierre de Coubertin to found the modern Olympic movement; Stoke Mandeville (south Midlands) is the site of the major hospital which specialises in spinal injuries and which began the Paralympics movement.
I give up. Permanent deacons?
humanoid cell phones merged with the race of the
Cyclops? very creeeeeeeeeepy
Looks like some kind of new “Dr. Who” alien. Maybe it shoots hypno rays out of it’s eye.
We need Gamera, the “Friend of All Children”, to come remove these imposters and replace them with a lovable animal: a giant space turtle that can breathe fire, shoot fire out his leg holes, and turn into a rotating buzzsaw. That’s an Olympic mascot I could get behind!
THey look like a couple of sporks with some kind of serious and disabling anatomy disorder. They’re fat for sporks, don’t you think?
The colors are weird too.
I thought of the 1984 (the book) video screen, in walking form, watching you, mobile, where ever you go. New age oriented rainbow to go with it.
they look like teletubbies
romanrevert – brilliant.
But can whoever designed these please be prosecuted for treason, for making us an international joke?
I seem to remember something from a theory course; we had a discussion of gender theory and the concept of “ugly”. Blobby, gender-ambiguous bodies are supposed to be a retaliation against societal “norms” of “imposed gender”, blah, blah, blah….
But ever since that conversation, I can’t look at “characters” like these without being concerned. The more we accept gender-neutral or gender-amiguous “characters”, the more harm it will do to us as a society.
A blancmange would have been better…
I cry “Hate Speech”. Mandeville is clearly incontinent, which is a vicious stereotype of persons with a disability. They must do penance before the Canadian Human Rights Court.
Oh, dear, I honestly thought they were created for the Rainbow Sash attacks this Sunday.
I find them quite scary in any case.
Yikes. Due to a slow internet I read all the comments while the picture was loading and it was even worse than I expected.
The mascots for the Vancouver Olympics were cute and cuddly.
see: http://www.vancouver2010.com/mascot/en/profile_m.html
Plus they fit the culture of Western Canada. In 1984 (Summer), at least people knew what Sam the eagle was about the US (I still have the beach towel from ’84). These London things are even worse than izzy. The rest are forgettable.
I seem to remember these from “Space 1999”.
I can’t decide if the pose is Lord of the Dance or Neil Diamond….hmmmmm.
Actually, they kinda remind me of the aliens that occasionally appear on The Simpsons. Although I had to laugh — and agree with — Brian Sullivan’s Monty Python reference.
Honi soit qui bien y pense!
The defence offered by their creators is that young children like them. But since young children are the one sector of society invariably bored stiff by athletics, this seems a little pointless.
What the…?
Looks like something you’d have in a nightmare! Creeepy indeed!
Why not have a lion-or even a bulldog? Nothing’s cute or endearing anymore, it seems!
Yes, they’re creeeepy! Your followers are so clever, Father, that reading all the comments, I’ve had a good laugh for the day. They’ve thought of everything!
Is this the consecration at an outside setting of the mass in the Novus Ordo?
The mascots look awful. Surely the organisers can do better than that.
If they need a bit of inspiration, they should have look at the mascots for the Sydney Olympics. Here is a link for that:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/newsflavor/2008/07/30/243071_7.jpg
Quite creepy…detached from all human experience is right…quite appropriate for the olympics actually. On the other hand, you can’t help but think that there MUST be some kind of political statement here, but what? Perhaps that they must ‘join together’ in order to see things clearly? That would fit right in with the ‘alle menschen bruder werden’ attitude of the IOC.
Do they have a copy of the “To Serve Man” cookbook stashed away somewhere?
THAT’S where I’ve seen them!! I think they are related to the woman in Futurama…
They have their own website, which says they were ‘born out of the rainbow’ The video is sort of cute, but they are still strange looking.
http://www.ourlondon2012.com/mascots/
Well, at least when they stand side-by-side, you get two eyes…