Tuesday, June 25, 2019

That's A New One

My wife and I went to a nearby town called New Braunfels for our anniversary this past weekend. We went tubing down the Comal River:


Which is a big attraction there. There was a lot of other people on the river with us as well.


And as happens to us every time, there were several things that we forgot to bring with us when we left home. We swung into the local Walmart to grab stuff that we needed, and while I was looking for what I needed, I saw something that surprised me.

Walmart always makes T-shirts of the local high school that you can buy and, I don't know, wear to their football games or something to show some support. It doesn't really support the school in any real way. Walmart gets all the money from the sale of the shirts, but I guess you are supporting them in thought anyway.

So, they had the shirt for the New Braunfels team, and I saw that that school has a rather unusual mascot:


Not only is the shirt an awful tie dye thing, but their mascot is the friggin' unicorns. I know what you're saying right now, "Big Anklevich, you're a sexist douche. Unicorns are noble and fierce mythical creatures," and both of those things might be true, but mascots have always been something that was supposed to be fearsome, or something that the imagery could strike fear into the hearts of your opponents.

Nobody chooses rabbits or prairie dogs as their mascot, because that isn't the least bit fearsome, and their opponents would only laugh. How much did the ducks have to fight just to live down their mascot in The Mighty Ducks movie. The fact that they called the movie The Mighty Ducks says all that you need to say.

So, if my high school was the unicorns, I probably wouldn't choose to go out for any of the sports. It would force you to face ridicule from every other team you played against. Week after week, it would be ridicule. If you can put Rainbow Dash on your uniforms, and people would have to say, "I guess that works," then you shouldn't have that mascot.

If you must us a mythical creature, try dragons, or even griffons, but don't go with Unicorns...or pixies, or brownies, or pecks, or even stupid daikinis.

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