A yellow cat with blue hands and a wacky attitude will be the official mascot for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil, it was revealed Monday, 620 days before the start of the Games of the XXI Olympiad. His green-leaf-haired best friend will join him as the mascot for the Paralympics, to be held in Rio de Janeiro later that year.
The backstory (which is hilariously described as “fictional,” lest you confuse an anthropomorphic cat and green-haired representation of flora as “reality”) says the two were born from the excitement over Brazil receiving the games back in 2009. So that makes them five years old? That’s far too young to be standing alone on a balcony.
Why doesn’t the blue one have feet? (Reuters)
The Olympic mascot “combines the agility of cats, the sway of monkeys and the grace of birds. He can stretch his arms and legs as much as he wants. […] This means he can jump higher, run faster and be stronger than ever.” (Cough, check for PEDs, cough.)
As Olympic mascots go, these are pretty nice. The green hair represents Brazil’s nature, but sort of looks like something that would be enjoyed by people in Colorado and Oregon, if you catch my drift. Jeff Zillgitt of USA TODAY Sports thinks the blue mascot’s hair resembles Brazilian basketball star Anderson Varejao. Either him or Sideshow Bob. The yellow cat is nice too. Both fit the three C’s all Olympic mascot needs: Cute, cuddly and capable of brining in hundreds of millions in revenue.
(AP)
They haven’t been named yet, which is sort of weird given that they’re five. A public poll will be held to determine that honor. The choices: Oba and Eba; Tiba Tuque and Esquindim; and Vinicius and Tom. My Portuguese isn’t what it once was, but those sound like rejected names from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter manuscript.
Brazil’s last attempt at a worldwide mascot at the World Cup was generally considered a failure, both because his name sounded like an oil conglomerate (Fuleco) and because he looked like a cereal character who would steal your lunch money.
As far as history goes, Brazil’s summer mascots are middle of the road. The worst, by far, was the cycloptic mascot from the 2012 Games. Greece’s 2004 mascots weren’t great either. The less said about Izzy, the Atlanta 1996 mascot, the better. Cobi, the 1992 mascot from Barcelona was one of the best, as was, interestingly, the Soviet bear Misha from the boycotted 1980 Games.
