There is no hell like an Olympic mascot hell, as Tokyo will learn
Enthusiasts of human foolishness pricked up their ears yesterday when the Tokyo Olympics organising committee announced that it will open up the design of its 2020 Games mascot to the public.
Japan Today reported: “As children counted down to noon, Chairperson of the mascot Selection Panel Ryohei Miyata beat a ceremonial gong, and they cheered the announcement that the design entry website was now open.”
Ask not for whom the gong tolls, Chairperson of the Mascot Selection Panel Ryohei Miyata. It tolls for thee. This is going to be a fiasco.
The Olympics have a rich tradition of inappropriate, bizarre or just plain terrible mascots, and there is every reason to expect that throwing the design process open to the floor will only make that worse.
The Boaty Mcboatface maritime nomenclature disaster, when the Great British Public were invited to name a vessel, proved yet again that while democracy may remain the least worst option for collective decision-making, we should not give up on finding another method just yet.
The first Games to have a mascot was Munich 1972. The nation of West Germany, on the comeback trail after what a competitor might describe as a “disappointing few decades in which we let ourselves down”, selected a friendly, approachable, badly drawn dachshund known as Waldi. Matters went rapidly downhill from there.
Montreal in 1976 saw Canada greet the world with a beaver called Amik that was just about passable in 2D form but, when turned into a soft toy, resembled nothing so much as a sodden, pony-tailed hairpiece. No fewer than four individuals shared art credits on the project, setting a template for future mascot misfires: design by committee.
As well as artistic incompetence and too many cooks, the third enduring trait has been a fondness for the nightmarish, the fever dream, the acid flashback inspired logo. Atlanta’s 1996 creation, Izzy, was seemingly designed not only for the benefit of overexcitable children, but actually by them. Nobody seemed clear who, or what, Izzy actually was meant to be.
This gung-ho approach to reason and logic began a trend that reached its apotheosis in the London 2012 graphic, commissioned at vast expense, which was widely accepted to most resemble the cartoon character Lisa Simpson in a compromising position.
Mercifully, the Olympics have tended to eschew the “human in a furry suit” approach that football has adopted from American sports.
The most important mascot artist of his generation, Arsenal’s Gunnersaurus, became a legend of sporting silliness when he joined a minute’s silence before one match, standing among the players around the centre circle in solidarity, giant dino-head solemnly bowed. Who among us would not feel that life had been well lived if an outsized soft toy honoured our passing in just such a fashion?
From wonky wiener-dogs to grieving prehistoric predators, mascots have been a sure source of well-meaning buffoonery. Allowing the public to pitch in can only make matters dafter still: one therefore has high hopes that these Olympics could become a classic even before a discus has been hurled.
Over to you, graphic design lunatics of Japan: you know what to do.