Since they were selected as the official mascots back in 2009, detractors have had a field day with the pair, questioning how faceless monsters fashioned out of “drops of steel” - the duo’s creation story - won out over 100 other designs by artists and agencies.

“We don’t see a smiling face, it’s not a friendly eye. “It’s not so friendly,” said Jenny Zhang, looking at a Wenlock while in London from China for business. Olympic mascots over the years have raised the question: What were they thinking? (Turin’s humanized snowball and ice cube in 2006, anyone?) But even Sydney’s spiky echidna managed to look cute and cuddly, while a barrage of critics say Wenlock and Mandeville are anything but. They peer out of official London Olympics snow globes, adorn backpacks and towels, decorate magnets and mugs.

Wenlock’s head is round, while Mandeville has ridges atop his noggin. Both of their heads have a “taxi light” in the middle, a tribute to London’s famous black cabs. They have legs, but no feet arms bearing “friendship bands” in the colours of the Olympic rings, but no fingers. In place of a face, each has one large, staring eye - a camera, according to Olympic organizers, to let them “record everything.” Wenlock - named after an English town in Shropshire that helped inspire the modern Olympic Games - and Mandeville, whose name pays tribute to the hospital considered the birthplace of the Paralympic Games - look more like surveillance robots than humans or animals. The futuristic-looking pair have popped up all over London, casting their one-eyed gaze at tourists and locals alike from posters, statues and a slew of Olympic merchandise ranging from key chains to cutlery.īloggers and other commentators, however, have been skewering the duo for scaring children and projecting a creepy surveillance-state image of the Olympic Games. The official mascots of London’s Olympic and Paralympic Games - Wenlock and Mandeville - have been called all of those things, but organizers are hoping to tack on a more positive title: merchandising magic.

London olympic games 2012 mascot