In my childhood, it seemed like any trip to a public place was enlivened by the charm and joy of seeing a wonky 3D approximation of a beloved character distributing advertising literature, presenting medals at a sports day or switching on the town’s Christmas lights.
Better still, of course, were corporate mascots, such as Westside Sam, cowboy avatar of nebulously western-themed Derry supermarket West Side Stores. This large, padded figure, wore cowboy boots and a big, floppy Stetson, and walked around handing out flyers for various discounts and shooting finger-guns if you took one. (Sidebar: it always puzzled me why West Side Stores leaned into the “West” part of its name, since West Side Stores is clearly a pun on West Side Story, and thus the correct parallel branding should have been related to 1950s New York or musical theatre. But I digress.)
These days, mascots appear to have lost their allure. And I mean true mascots, not the effort-resistant moustache of the Go.Compare opera singer, and even less your CGI renderings of meerkats or nodding Churchill bulldogs. Do kids these days even know who Ronald McDonald is? Have they met the Honey Monster? Has Tony the Tiger uttered his final growl and hung up his oversized head? There were cheers for Partick Thistle’s “demented sun God” Kingsley, and West Brom’s beautifully utilitarian Colin the Combi (an anthropomorphic Ideal Logic2 Heat 30kW boiler) and yet, even in the world of football, innovations remain few and far between.
The world is poorer for it. We need, and deserve, a little more whimsy in our lives, and I don’t think the sight of a middle-aged man wearing a 48kg suit in a crowded place for a decent wage is too much to ask. Today’s companies should know they have big shoes – and trunks, and heads – to fill.
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