BY: NCViking

The London Olympics unveiled their mascots for the 2012 games, Wenlock and Mandeville. Um … yeah.

Here is a picture:

What – the heck – are those things?! Some sort of alien salt shakers?

This is how they have been described (my comments in parenthesis):

The pair are based on a short story by children’s author Michael Morpurgo that tells how they were fashioned from droplets of the steel used to build the Olympic stadium. (oh, I picked that one up right away) They will be crucial in raising funds and spreading messages about the games (that Brits are on something?).

Wenlock, named after the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock that helped inspire Pierre de Coubertin to launch the modern Olympics, and Mandeville, inspired by the Buckinghamshire town where the Paralympics were founded, will become very familiar over the next two years.

The chairman of the London organising committee of the Olympic games – Locog -, Lord Coe, said the mascots were aimed squarely at children (not hippies on an acid trip?) and designed with the digital age in mind. He said they had the most positive reaction in workshops to road test them.

Among the designs rejected at the start of an open pitch process were anthropomorphic pigeons (anyone who has been to Trafalgar Square would get that one), an animated tea pot (OK) and a Big Ben with arms and legs (now that’s London). (So they rejected the London-themed stuff for freaky alien telephone receiver-looking things?)

Children will be encouraged to interact with the characters, inviting them via Facebook, Twitter and the web to visit their school and, said Coe, inspiring them to take up different sports (I imagine they will be more inspired to scream and run away.)

What are they smoking across the pond?! Good grief! If any of you have/had small children, you KNOW that this is not the first head-scratchingly bizarre thing to come from our friends in Britain.

How about those freakishly weird Teletubbies (that spooked Jerry Fallwell’s homophobe genes)? …

… And the evil, killer trash cans of Dr. Who called the Daleks?

… OR … I can’t even describe this one …Boobah.

Just … just …

what the hell?

[WARNING: watching video may permanently damage neurons.]

I think the Brits have been taking too many weekend junkets to Amsterdam, either that or they have all gone utterly barking mad! Gotta love them.

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