From Chess Olympiad's Thambi to the 1889 Handsome Dan, a story of mascots

Two days from now, on Thursday, the 44th Chess Olympiad begins in Chennai – a first for India. Its official logo and mascot, a chess knight called Thambi, is now omnipresent in the city. But this horse-headed mascot is only the latest in a series of icons that have come to define the branding of global sports events. Here’s a look at mascots, their history, and some of the most popular examples from across the world, with the known beginnings dating back to 1889.

Understanding mascots

Mascots are first and foremost iconic. Martin Kemp in his book, Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon, defines icons as images that have achieved “exceptional levels of widespread recognisability and…carry a rich series of varied associations for large numbers of people across time and cultures”. Mascots often re-adapt such widely recognisable iconic images — animals, sports equipment, historical characters etc. — to highlight specific qualities associated with the product or service they sell. They are thus primarily an exercise in branding, and some of the most famous mascots are associated with major brands including Michelin tyres (The Michelin Man), Disney (Mickey Mouse), Pillsbury (Doughboy), Kellogg’s (Tony the Tiger), and so on.

But it was sports teams that had first thought of using live animals as mascots, a practice still carried out in American college sports. The first such mascots, Yale’s 'Handsome Dan' bulldog introduced in 1889 being one of the earliest recorded examples, were used as side entertainment for marquee games as well as a way of intimidating rival teams. Over time these mascots evolved into brand-carriers, often carrying banners of local alcohol and food brands on their backs, or appearing on the signs of hotdog and street food stalls outside the game’s venue. However, with the evolution of American puppetry in the 20th century, the mascot became a wearable costume, and predatory animals were gradually replaced by fantasy characters who could extend a family appeal to the games.  

Mascots retain their status as entertainers in American sports with the likes of Mr Met, the official mascot for Major League Baseball team New York Mets, and Benny the Bull, the mascot of the National Basketball Association’s Chicago Bulls. Both continue to be crowd-pleasers through their interactions with the fans, audience, and celebrities. 

For global sports events, however, like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics, the mascot is often seen as a brand ambassador for the nation, city, or region hosting the events. Iconic signifiers of the host nation’s culture are often re-adopted into fictional characters.

Thus, the Moscow 1980 Olympics had Misha the bear; Beijing chose Pan-Pan the panda for its 1990 Asian Games; London had the bizarrely metallic Wenlock, a fictional character for the 2012 Olympics said to be made of the last drop of metal used for the London Olympic Stadium; Rio had Vinicius, named after Brazilian poet and lyricist Vinicius de Moraes, and a mix of several animals native to Brazil; and Qatar has La’eeb, a white floating keffiyeh with eyes, eyebrows, and a mouth.
 

But how has India done in designing its mascots from time to time?

Young brother making grand moves?

Thambi, or younger brother in Tamil, is a chess knight wearing a shirt and veshti. Thambi looks less like a chess player, and more like a brawler out of the Tamil-language action thriller Vikram. Standing upright with crossed muscular arms, the knight looks ready for a throwdown on the chequered battlefield. 

While comparisons are being made with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin, who is similarly clad in a shirt and white veshti and is the “younger brother” in the DMK family, the dress and the name are too common in the state to pin down on a single individual. It can also be said that Thambi is more a stallion than a chess knight. Either way, Thambi has quickly become an omnipresence in the state, gracing giant cut-outs, billboards, statues, and posters along with images of the chief minister.

What comes as a surprise, however, is that no iconographic reference, either through the mascot or otherwise, has yet been made by the host city to its home-grown chess grandmaster and Indian chess icon, Viswanathan Anand. 

The old classic

The buzz around Thambi reminds one of Appu — arguably the first ever mascot for the Asian Games. Appu was inspired by a real elephant, Kuttinarayanan, who was six years old at the start of the 1882 Asian Games and was one of the 36 elephants brought to Delhi on a special train from the Guruvayoor temple complex in Kerala for the welcome ceremony. 

Appu appeared as a line-drawn image of a happy, prancing kid elephant. Besides cementing elephants as an iconic representation of India’s land, fauna and culture, Appu began the tradition of assigning mascots based on national symbols of the Asiad’s host countries. An amusement park built in 1984 at Pragati Maidan, Delhi, to commemorate the 1982 Asian Games was also named after this endearing mascot: Appu Ghar. Now found on bags, t-shirts, postcards and other collectibles, the happy but simplistic elephant mascot has endured as a beloved icon.

New games, new faces

However, when Delhi became the host for the Commonwealth Games (CWG) in 2010, a new animal was chosen as the mascot — India’s national animal, the tiger. Nicknamed Shera, this time the CWG organisation committee gave the mascot a background story, official jerseys as well as a theme song. Moreover, the official website also made sure to specify its iconic associations including “majesty, power, charisma, intelligence, and grace”. The site also rooted Shera in mythology, highlighting the tiger’s role as a ride of the Hindu goddess Durga. Shera, too, was marketed on posters, t-shirts, stamps, and other collectibles.

More recently, the ICC ODI World Cup 2011, hosted jointly by India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, brought back the elephant in Stumpy. And in May this year Union Sports Minister Anurag Thakur launched the mascot ‘Dhakad’, a white bull, for the Khelo India Youth Games.  

Those that worked, or didn't  

Despite their iconic nature, not all mascots have been equally popular or uniformly successful in communicating their significance. 

Mascots like Wenlock have been criticised for their unorthodox designs and haven’t always been successful in connecting with the fans. Others like Appu and Pan-Pan have been crowd-pullers and remained beloved well after the immediate sport events they were associated with.

It is often an interesting conversation on how the most carefully selected cultural signifiers often fail to connect with their intended audience, while simple line drawings can generate a fan following of their own. 

Moreover, mascots sometimes lose their basic iconic significations and attain other more controversial ones. For instance, several American college sports teams had mascots with names referencing deprecating epithets for Native American communities, such as "chiefs", "redskins" etc., and have therefore been changed over time.