Jump to content

PyeongChang 2018 Mascot


Recommended Posts

For all collectible fans, they started selling many mascot related pins since the One Year countdown. Sadly it seems they only have them at Lotte stores so far like the other merchandise I posted. Here's hoping they start selling those overseas. (If someone finds where to buy them online I would thank them in advance)

They also state they're going to make more pins beside the initial 115 ones

luTsrD0.jpg

0UGM04Y.jpg

CfzhG9P.jpg

TjPYpOT.jpg

Another pic of the Soohorang stickers (one with the recently unveiled torch)

m1tINNN.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Hello Everybody !

I'm going to Japan this summer and by a coincidence, I will have a 2 hrs stop in Seoul airport. Do you know if they are selling Pyongchang mascot stuff there ? I will be so happy to purchase one ! I was so frustrated in Rio last year when I decided to buy "Vinicius" only last day in Rio's airport and when they said "We only take Visa card" (which I didn't have...).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, fantomex said:

Hello Everybody !

I'm going to Japan this summer and by a coincidence, I will have a 2 hrs stop in Seoul airport. Do you know if they are selling Pyongchang mascot stuff there ? I will be so happy to purchase one ! I was so frustrated in Rio last year when I decided to buy "Vinicius" only last day in Rio's airport and when they said "We only take Visa card" (which I didn't have...).

They were apparently selling lots of them at Lotte outlets a couple of weeks ago due to the One Year countdown. If you scroll up and look at the pictures I posted you can see some of them. Not sure if they are still selling those but you can try going there. Mascot products are also sold by The North Face stores. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

^^ Not really sure. They have an official store online, but sadly it's only in Korean and showing prices in Won. maybe you could compare the prices

http://store.pyeongchang2018.com/

In other news, someone posted this work in progress animation on their Instagram account. Either a mobile game about the mascot or a new Soohorang ad.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ikarus360 said:

Korea Post has released a series of stamps conmemorating the upcoming Winter Olympics, featuring Soohorang

korea-winter-olympic-stamps.jpg

 

Awesome!

They look cool

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Yeah, the general opinion of many seem to be that Soohorang was hands down one of the best Olympic mascots in a long while. As winter games go, it might had been one of the most profitable since Cobi. Many also agree the Tokyo mascots have a tough act to follow (many korean netizens are already joking Soho will still stay undethroned). In all honesty, this is the first mascot in a very long time i'm sad to see go, but at least I hope it stays alive as collectible stuff.

https://deadspin.com/will-japan-s-olympic-mascot-be-a-soohorang-or-an-izzy-1823406254

Quote

Will Japan’s Olympic Mascot Be A Soohorang Or An Izzy?

The 2018 Winter Olympics are over, and there was one clear winner: Soohorang, mascot of the Pyeongchang games.

Deadspin’s Hannah Keyser, who was in South Korea for the games, says that Soohorang (a white tiger) and 2018 Paralympics mascot Bandabi (an Asiatic black bear) “were everywhere.” She added: “Soohorang was huge. And, like, surprisingly universally beloved.”

Yes, part of Soohorang’s ubiquity had to do with the fact that athletes were given stuffed versions of it after their events in lieu of a medal (those came later at a separate ceremony). But the mascot was so popular that people had to resort to buying lookalike versions of the cute Soohorang hats children were wearing at the closing ceremonies.

Olympic mascots are a big deal. The infamous mascot for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta was originally named Whatizit. Later rechristened Izzy, the mascot was compared to a sperm in sneakers. Matt Groening said it looked like a “bad marriage of the Pillsbury Doughboy and the ugliest California Raisin.” The message from insiders was pretty much the same. “We were horrified,” 1996 Olympic marathon director Julia Emmons told Atlanta magazine years later. “Completely and totally horrified.”

And yet Soohorang was the “star” of the Olympic games, in part because the mascot costume was too big and got stuck in a few doors. You never know what’s going to hit.

shrtrfxefpmqnnmx30nk.jpg

If the mascot goes right, it turns into a cute symbol of unity and sells a bunch of plush dolls. If it goes wrong, it’s a complete disaster and people are still dragging it in Atlanta magazine years later. South Korea’s organizers clearly did their job. This means that the pressure is now on for the mascot-mad country of Japan, which just named the mascots for the Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo in 2010.

Schoolchildren around the country voted for their favorites from a list of three mascots. (Two separate mascot committees previously met 15 times to winnow down an original pool of 1,753.) And, as Kotaku noted this morning, the winners look a lot like Pokémon.

Looking like Pokémon isn’t bad. It’s certainly better than looking like a sperm in sneakers. And these mascots, which are currently unnamed, do have pretty cool superpowers. The sapphire Olympic mascot can teleport anywhere instantly, while the deep pink Paralympic mascot can talk with stones and the wind.

But will they capture the public’s attention? The right mascot can do big business. Products bearing the imagine of Kumamon, a black bear from Kumamoto Prefecture, racked up $1.2 billion in sales in 2016. The wrong mascot… is something we’ve covered already.

Some mascot observers are nervous that Japan’s new mascots might not hold up to Soohorang and Bandabi. The BBC says the new mascots “have a tough act to follow.” The Japan Times says that the “success of Pyeongchang Olympic mascots leaves Japan in a bind.”

Yukari Tanaka writes that some people don’t like that the mascots look like Pokémon. She argues that “the Tokyo options have come off second best when compared to the mascots at the center of the Pyeongchang Games.” She quotes someone on Twitter: “The difference in cuteness is vast.” Another Twitter user weighed in with criticism, writing “I want to buy a lot of official Olympic merchandise. I suspect whichever mascots get chosen for Tokyo 2020 won’t be as cute. They probably won’t inspire me to buy a product.”

For all the magical talking-to-stones-and-the-wind aspects of the process, this isn’t really that complicated. These cute mascots are generally engineered to get you to buy ****. If they don’t do that, then they will have failed—even if they can tell us what rocks are saying. And if Japan holds the Olympics and the mascot is a bust, is anything real anymore?
 

 

Also, one question we all had was: Who was the firm who designed this popular mascot and the concept behind it? Well, here is this article

20180222001019_0.jpg

Quote

[Herald Interview] The man behind Soohorang the white tiger

Korean design firm reveals how and why a white tiger and a moon bear have become Olympic mascots

Athletes competing in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games are presented with a stuffed tiger when they step onto the podium. This peculiar scene often leaves many viewers wondering “Who made it?” 

The name of the non-athlete star and mascot of the Olympics is “Soohorang,” a combined word of “Sooho,” which means protection in Korean and “-rang,” the middle letter of the Korean word for tiger and also the last letter of a traditional folk song of Gangwon Province “Jeong-seon A-ri-rang.” 

The official Olympic mascot’s popularity is evident. Tens of thousands of visitors flock to the Olympic Super Store gift shops every day near the sports venues looking for the mascot. An actor sparked a social media sensation after wearing the tiger costume and being stuck in doorways due to its almost comically big head. 

The mascot was created by local design company Mass C&G located in western Seoul that was selected in 2014 by the PyeongChang Organizing Committee to design it, along with “Bandabi,” a moon bear that represents the PyeongChang Paralympics.

20180222001020_0.jpg

Lee Hee-gon, chief marketing officer of mass C&G, explains PyeongChang Olympic mascots Soohorang and Bandabi. Park Hyun-koo/The Korea Herald

Here are some of the questions The Korea Herald asked Lee Hee-gon, Chief Marketing Officer of Mass C&G. 


KH: How did you apply for the national project to become the Olympic mascot design group? 

Lee: It was a public bidding project in 2014, which means everyone could apply for the project to design an Olympic mascot. But the most important question (for the organizers) was whether or not they had the right set of skills and experiences. Our company had them, I believe, as one of very few design groups in the country whose main focus and specialty is in creating animated characters. For nearly 30 years, we designed hundreds of animated characters, including “Kumdori,” the official mascot of the 1993 Daejeon Expo. To become selected, around 100 staff, designers and content creators focused on how to adopt storytelling strategies and marketing methods for an Olympic mascot even before starting with designing. 

KH: Why the tiger and the bear for the mascots among other animals? 

Lee: The two appear in the myth of Dangun who is known as the legendary founder of Korea. A tiger represents an adventurous and very courageous character in the myth, whereas a bear is seen to have patience and perseverance. Those characteristics are the main spirit for the Olympic athletes. 

Most importantly, the tiger is the most favorite animal by people to represent the event, as shown by a series of initial surveys, and was also used for the country‘s first Olympics in 1988. This time, it is a white tiger to represent and act as a symbol of the country, just like pandas do for China. 

KH: Their genders and ages?

Lee: Soohorang and Bandabi have no particular genders or ages. 
20180222001021_0.jpg

KH: How did you come up with their names, Soohorang and Bandabi?

Lee: First of all, it was almost impossible to find names that are interesting, short and easy to pronounce by foreigners and, at the same time, have no copy right. Among 2,000 different names we finally came up with, the two survived after going through a number of consulting to see if they evoke no bad images when written in foreign languages. 

KH: Why such a big head size for Soohorang? 

Lee: What is special about it in comparison with other Olympic mascots is that it has so many facial expressions, just like human beings do. In order to put them onto its face, we decided to enlarge the head. And we knew by fact that people tend to prefer big heads in characters. Big heads make them more adorable. 


KH: How did it feel when you first unveiled the characters to the world in 2016.

Lee: We were very nervous before we unveiled them because we were not sure how they would react. But it turned out the public reaction remained very positive about the new Olympic characters. One contributing factor is that the organizing committee distributed emojis of Soohorang and Bandabi in partnership with KakaoTalk (most popular mobile instant messaging application in South Korea). People got used to the characters a lot faster than we expected thanks to the emojis, although we think it would be better if they give them out for free for public interest.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Sorry for the necroposting, but this is kind of interesting. Soohorang and Bandabi popularity popularity after the WOG ended was so big the people of Gangwon province didn't wanted to let them go. So they've decided to make them the official mascots of Gangwon starting next month, after a year of discussions.

However, due to copyright issues since the mascots are still owned by the IOC, they had to be renamed and slighty redesigned as Beom-E and Gom-E. They still easily keep most of the spirit of the original duo, though.

BIN0001.jpg

996A5D4A5D7B237733

04on.png

05on.png

06.jpg

14.jpg

Very happy to see these mascots will still stay alive (sort of) since they were easily one of the best in a very long time. Dunno if other olympic host in the past decided to keep their former mascot alive as part of something.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/27/2019 at 3:02 PM, Ikarus360 said:

Sorry for the necroposting, but this is kind of interesting. Soohorang and Bandabi popularity popularity after the WOG ended was so big the people of Gangwon province didn't wanted to let them go. So they've decided to make them the official mascots of Gangwon starting next month, after a year of discussions.

However, due to copyright issues since the mascots are still owned by the IOC, they had to be renamed and slighty redesigned as Beom-E and Gom-E. They still easily keep most of the spirit of the original duo, though.

BIN0001.jpg

996A5D4A5D7B237733

04on.png

05on.png

06.jpg

14.jpg

Very happy to see these mascots will still stay alive (sort of) since they were easily one of the best in a very long time. Dunno if other olympic host in the past decided to keep their former mascot alive as part of something.

Children of Sohoorang and Bandabi.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...