Olympics From 1968 to 2014: Gallery of Olympic Mascots infographic

aNewDomain.net — Olympic mascots are smurfish, fantastical and cartoonish characters Olympics committees have been attaching to Olympic Summer and Winter Games since the 1968 Olympic games in Grenoble, France. Check out the Gallery of Olympic Mascots infographic, below.

Mascots started out as straight-out cute toys but they’ve grown increasingly strange in design and concept. Consider the 1968 Winter Olympics games at Grenoble, France. The mascot, as you see below, was simply a stylized skier. By the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, there were not one, but two mascots. One was a stylized dove, created by designers Eduardo Terrazas and Lance Wyman. The other was the wild-looking “El Jaguar Rojo de Chichen-Itza,” a red Jaguar on a throne. In the Summer 2012 Olympics, Wenlock and Mandeville designed the craziest mascot — drops of steel with cameras as eyes. Supposedly it represented the UK’s start of the Industrial Revolution. And for the 2014 Winter Olympics? It was the first mascot ever that popular vote determined. Check out the Gallery of Olympic Mascots below …

Graphics credit: Visually

For aNewDomain.net, I’m Tom Ewing.

Based in the U.S. and Europe, Tom Ewing is an intellectual property strategist and attorney who advises the United Nations agency WIPO on patent issues, lawsuits and strategy. He also is a senior editor and a board member at aNewDomain.net.