Two ultra-modern one-eyed creatures have been unveiled as the mascots for the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics in the hope they will adorn millions of items of merchandise.
The organisers of the Games believe Wenlock, the Olympic mascot, and Mandeville, his Paralympic colleague, will raise at least £15 million of the £70 million they need to generate from licensed merchandising.
They will adorn everything from toys to mugs when the mascots go on sale from this year’s two-year countdown to the Games.
The chairman of the London 2012 organising committee, Sebastian Coe, said on Wednesday he hoped children would come to think of the mascots as “good friends”.
The only nod to a London landmark in the design of the mascots is the orange lights on their heads, which their creators say are inspired by the Taxi sign on the top of British capital’s iconic black cabs.
Their names reach back into Olympic and Paralympic history. Wenlock comes from the village of Much Wenlock in Shropshire, central England, where a multi-sport event was one of the inspirations for the founder of the Olympic movement, Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
Mandeville’s name is inspired by Stoke Mandeville, a pioneering British hospital set up to help former soldiers suffering from spinal injuries. It devised a sports event for the patients which was a fore-runner of the Paralympics.
— AFP