Mascot

A mascot is any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fictional, representative spokespeople for consumer products, such as the rabbit used in advertising and marketing for the General Mills brand of breakfast cereal, Trix. A mascot is any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fictional, representative spokespeople for consumer products, such as the rabbit used in advertising and marketing for the General Mills brand of breakfast cereal, Trix. In the world of sports, mascots are also used for merchandising. Team mascots are often related to their respective team nicknames. This is especially true when the team's nickname is something that is a living animal and/or can be made to have humanlike characteristics. For more abstract nicknames, the team may opt to have an unrelated character serve as the mascot. For example, the athletic teams of the University of Alabama are nicknamed the Crimson Tide, while their mascot is an elephant named Big Al. Team mascots may take the form of a logo, person, live animal, inanimate object, or a costumed character, and often appear at team matches and other related events, sports mascots are often used as marketing tools for their teams to children. Since the mid-20th century, costumed characters have provided teams with an opportunity to choose a fantasy creature as their mascot, as is the case with the Philadelphia Phillies' mascot, the Phillie Phanatic, and the Philadelphia Flyers' mascot, Gritty. Costumed mascots are commonplace, and are regularly used as goodwill ambassadors in the community for their team, company, or organization such as the U.S. Forest Service's Smokey Bear. It was originally organisations that first thought of using animals as a form of mascot to bring entertainment and excitement for their spectators. Before mascots were fictional icons or people in suits, animals were mostly used in order to bring a somewhat different feel to the game and to strike fear upon the rivalry teams. As the new era was changing and time went on, mascots evolved from predatory animals, to two-dimensional fantasy mascots, to finally what we know today, three-dimensional mascots. Stylistic changes in American puppetry in the mid-20th century, including the work of Jim Henson and Sid and Marty Krofft, soon were adapted to sports mascots. It allowed people to not only have visual enjoyment but also interact physically with the mascots. Marketers quickly realized the great potential in three-dimensional mascots and took on board the costumed puppet idea. This change encouraged other companies to start creating their own mascots, resulting in mascots being a necessity amongst not only the sporting industry but for other organisations The word 'mascot' originates from the French term 'mascotte' which means lucky charm. This was used to describe anything that brought luck to a household. The word was first recorded in 1867 and popularised by a French composer Edmond Audran who wrote the opera La mascotte, performed in December 1880. The word entered the English language in 1881. However, before this, the terms were familiar to the people of France as a slang word used by gamblers. The term is a derivative of the word 'masco' meaning sorceress or witch. Before the 19th century, the word 'mascot' was associated with inanimate objects that would be commonly seen such as a lock of hair or a figurehead on a sailing ship. But from then on until the present day, the term was then seen to be associated with good luck animals, objects etc. Often the choice of mascot reflects the desired quality; a typical example of this is the 'fighting spirit,' in which a competitive nature is personified by warriors or predatory animals. Mascots may also symbolize a local or regional trait, such as the Nebraska Cornhuskers' mascot, Herbie Husker: a stylized version of a farmer, owing to the agricultural traditions of the area in which the university is located. Similarly, Pittsburg State University uses Gus the Gorilla as its mascot, 'gorilla' being an old colloquial term for coal miners in the Southeast Kansas area in which the university was established.