In the spirit — I think — of the San Diego Chicken and the Phillie Phanatic, the Athens Olympics have come up with their own mascots to whip up interest among the kiddies.
But ostensibly lovable Phevos and Athena are turning out to be anything but.
Olympic mascots Phevos and Athena, siblings named for a pair of Greek deities, are catching an ungodly amount of abuse around Athens.
They were derided in various news articles, described as animated condoms and mutants from a nuclear meltdown. Their names were co-opted by anti-Olympic activists, who promptly firebombed two government vehicles in February.
Oh, my gods, where did things go wrong?
Turns out the pair are just another in a long line of maligned Olympic characters:
The mascots were not the vision of a single artist, such as the Spanish stoner who conjured Barcelona mascot Cobi — squiggled in about four seconds — while in a state of drug-induced bliss.
And in the pantheon of Olympic mascots, the Greek duo remains head and shoulders — if they actually had shoulders — above the most-reviled Olympic mascot ever, Izzy of the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta.
NBC announcer Bob Costas maligned [Phevos and Athena] as “a genetic experiment gone horribly, ghastly wrong.” Few disagreed.
Get your discounted mascot merchandise while it lasts.
