A mascot is a person or thing that is supposed to bring good luck, especially one linked to a particular organisation or event. Some of our clues for mascot include ‘Lucky emblem’, ‘Lucky symbol’ and ‘Team pet’.
The word mascot is derived from the French term mascotte meaning ‘good luck piece’, which ultimately came from the Occitan word masco, meaning witch.
French composer Edmond Audran popularised the word when he titled his 1880 operetta Le Mascotte, translated into English as The Mascot. The operetta tells the story of a farm girl who was a lucky charm for anyone who possessed her, and so a mascot came to mean any person, animal or thing that brought good luck.
The concept of a mascot dates back to ancient times when tribesmen wore animal masks and created totem poles depicting symbolic animals to incite successful hunts. They believed that creating likenesses of powerful animals would help them take on the animals’ power.
Today, you rarely attend a sports event without being entertained by a sporting mascot.
Organisers of the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, devised a cartoonlike figure of a skiing man and called him Schuss as an emblem of their Games.
Munich, West Germany adopted the idea and created the first official mascot for the 1972 Olympic Games, a dachshund named Waldi. The Olympic Games has had its own distinctive mascot or mascots ever since, mainly characters or animals associated with the host country.
The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games mascots were called Wenlock and Mandeville. Wenlock was named after the village of Much Wenlock, the place that inspired Pierre de Coubertin to launch the modern Olympics in 1890. Mandeville was named after Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games.
Aimed at connecting with children, they were like two shiny steel aliens, each with one eye and a yellow light on top of their head. The yellow light is the London Taxi sign, the friendship bracelets represent the Olympic rings and the one eye represents a camera lens so they can record what they see.
Many companies use mascots as corporate logos or advertising tools. One of the oldest corporate mascots, recognisable to most of us, would be the Michelin Man who has been promoting tyres since 1898.
Perhaps we should create a mascot to represent the Lovatts Puzzles identity? Any suggestions?
Happy Puzzling!
