No Penis Jokes! London’s Olympic Mascots Revealed

Penis jokes aside, these sleek one-eyed creatures are to be London’s Official mascots when they host the 2012 Summer Olympics. And compared to some of the other mascots countries chose when hosting the games, these ones look pretty damn cool.

These twin figures are designed to be the ideal Olympian athletes; futuristic, aerodynamic and inspired by the steel used to build London’s Olympic Stadium. But the most significant thing about the pair is the break from previous mascots used for the games, which tended to be animals or traditional characters of some sort.

When designing the mascots, Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games said designers looked to kids for ideas when researching.

“We spoke a lot to kids, and the one thing that they told us was, they weren’t attracted to human; they weren’t attracted to animal — they didn’t want a furry animal — but they just wanted a good story,” Coe said.

Each of the mascots has one eye, the only facial feature, meant to be a camera lens. On it’s forehead is an orange light, which was designed to resemble the traditional lights atop London taxi cabs, one of the only parts of the mascot that hint at the Olympic host city (though the blatant texture wrap of Britain’s National flag over the body is pretty blatant).

The mascots names are Wenlock and Mandeville, named after towns in the British countryside, which were significant to the modern games.

Source: CNN