Ludo Studios, the creators of the TV Series "Bluey" on ABC1, posted this picture to their official Facebook page at the weekend:
Now because I want to play with everything forever, my mind immediately pondered that Bluey should be the official Olympic Mascot for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane.
Then I paused.
Well no actually.
While there are indeed various petitions online to make Bluey for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, I think that there is potential fo something even grander than that. I do not think that just Bluey Bluey should be the mascot but rather...
The number of mascots at the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane should be 40.
I shall explain why.
Mascots for sporting tournaments tend to be the kind of thing which exists for a time and then is easily forgotten. Mascots for sporting tournaments exist in no context other than that time and place which they were created for and have no ability to be translated to anything else. Perhaps the exception to this was the series of daily newspaper comic strips in which Zakumi who was the mascot for the 2010 FIFA World Cup played with his friends for a time ran in various South African newspapers. Zakumi lasted for a slightly longer time the just the duration of the World Cup, however that is the exception rather than the rule. Sadly, the reason why mascots are easily forgotten is that they have no bigger world than the time and space they were created for.
Bluey is different.
Bluey already exists in a very big world, with loads of friends, and already very much has a sense of place. With the possible exceptions of Batman who lives in Gotham City, or various anime where suburban Tokyo is the default setting of just about everything, there are not really that many comic characters who are that obviously linked to that kind of sense of place. Yes there are cartoon characters who live in a fully fleshed out world but not even The Simpsons who live in Springfield, are linked to anywhere in the real world. In fact the location of Springfield and which state it is in, is a point of canon which is specifically unknown. In contrast, if there was a series made in 2054, where Bluey and Bingo are grown up and with children of their own, that future series would still likely be set in Brisbane. The word Queensland is specifically name called and the skyline is very very Brisbane.
Although this looks like a fait accompli as to why Bluey in principle should be should be the official Olympic Mascot for the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, that is that Bluey is so very obviously linked to the city, it kind of hints at the reason why mascots get left behind in the time and place which they were created. That is, they have to do all the work themselves.
Previous mascots for Olympics, end up have to do every sport and be good at it. Immediately you have unrealistic expectation on the mascots. Kobe at Barcelona in 1992 and Izzy at Atlanta in 1996, had the stage all to themselves and while this did mean that they could swim, run, dunk a basketball, throw a javelin, et cetera, they were very lonely. Not even Sydney which started the trend with three mascots (Syd, Millie and Olly (and unofficially Fatso)), really did much to break the mould which had been cast.
Bluey is different.
The thing about having a very large ensemble cast, in a very big world, with loads of friends, and already very much has a sense of place, is that if done correctly, no one character needs to do all the work themselves. Instead of having that one mascot who does every single sport, the very large ensemble cast can collectively play all the sports. Characters like Footix, Zakumi or Nutmeg who were all football mascots, only had to play one sport. Where as someone like Vinicious at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro has a series of two-minute shorts, the fact that he still had to do everything, left him up kind of sterile.
Having loads of characters, lends itself to a unique idea. As this one picture suggests, you could have a different character for every single sport, such as:
Bluey - Swimming
Bandit - Tennis
Chili - Field Hockey
Big Belt - Weightlifting
Muffin - Gymnastics
Honey - Archery
The Terriers - Fencing
Winston - Wrestling
Bingo - Running
... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
This also solves the related problem of the Pictogram. Pictograms were introduced at Tokyo in 1964 because the organisers knew that as Japanese has three scripts, none of which look familiar to most visitors who come from countries who use Extended-Latin scripts, that they needed to come up with something that would communicate things in a hurry without needing to read. Since then they have been played with, from the ultra-efficient Pictograms at Munich in 1972, to the borderline ridiculous at Mexico City in 1968 and Paris in 2024 where form has completely obliterated function. By linking a different character for every different sport, not only do you remove the sterility which exists by one character having to do everything but it does that deeper task of linking story to place.
Further to this, by linking character to story to place, and having a very large ensemble cast, in a very big world, with loads of friends, this would enable the whole design language of the games to tell a bigger and better story; namely that everyone can have a go. The series Bluey with its very large ensemble cast already has a range of characters who all look different and diverse but who share a unified design language. That would also lend itself to the slogan of the Olympics without having to think about it: "Everyone can have a go”.
The only real precedent for this was Astroboy who kind of became the mascot of Tokyo in 1964, or perhaps possible Charlie Brown and Snoopy who lent their names to the Apollo 10 spacecraft. Yes Bluey is a proprietary property which as all kinds of licencing arrangements in place but that’s a problem for legal people to work out.
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