the klog

How hard would it have been to just have a cute little giant panda as the 2008 Olympic mascot? Why did they have to decide on five mascots? And they look so... lame, too. *sigh*

Then again, if you scroll to the bottom of that page, you'll see that most of the mascots haven't been that great. 1980 through 1992 had pretty good ones, but I think Atlanta's "Izzy" permanently destroyed the Olympic mascot mojo. :P

Oo oo.. this bit on page two is priceless:

In terms of the artistic form of mascots, before the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, most Olympic mascots were created based on the animals unique to the host countries and they were normally of one species. Since 1992, human or totally invented figures have appeared and changes have also taken place in the number of mascots. The 1998 Nagano Winter Olympic Games had four mascots; the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games had three and the 2004 Athens Olympic Games has two.

Now I've got it! They've got five mascots because that means they're better than a Schick Quattro! :D Oh, and Japan. There's no way they could let a Japanese record stand!

Whoa.. on second thought, maybe I shouldn't complain, after looking at the first Olympic mascot. Yikes!

Unrelated: Whoa.. I wish I could take hand-held night-time photos that look this good.