There are so many colleges and that makes coming up with an original mascot almost impossible. Still, some schools managed to make that great creative leap, only to plummet into a chasm of shame. Here are just a few of those now discontinued college mascots...
1. Lobster Baby
2. Badnana
Suffering from three straight years of losses, Endworth College hoped to bring fans back to the stadium with the mildly risqué antics of new mascot Badnana. At first interest was minimal, so Badnana’s act started to get dirtier and nastier as he began to reveal more and more of his long, curved fruit. Soon the stadium was packed, whether there was a game or not, with students paying upwards of $600 for ten minutes alone with the mascot. Eventually bouncers were hired, the mob got involved, vice squads routinely raided the place, the school lost both its NCAA standing and official academic accreditation and Endworth College ultimately became the largest brothel to offer classes in comparative literature and biodiversity.
3. Toasty
The University of Hackensack was not known for baked goods. Or for having an athletic department. But when a sophomore attended a Halloween party dressed as toast, school officials realized they had found a cheery emblem to help students forget the college was recently ranked first in regret. To maintain the fantasy, however, the sophomore was forced to wear the costume 24-7, ultimately leading to constant dehydration. Then multiple heat strokes. Then the student actually believing he was toast. Soon Toasty was running around campus, smearing butter and jelly on itself and demanding to be eaten. By the time the mascot had constructed a massive toaster out of car parts stolen from campus parking lots in the hopes of “becoming crunchier,” the university had realized its mistake. Toasty now spends his day in a psychiatric hospital, worried the birds will get him.
4. Lord Helpus
Though it didn’t boast a single sports team, the Marshfield School of Design wanted a mascot that could showcase its campus’s creative professionalism. Alas, Marshfield soon realized what happens when you guarantee art school admission to anyone whose check clears. The end result not only betrayed a complete lack of talent in the school’s teachers and students, but judging from the use of countless liquor boxes it also revealed a college overcome by rampant alcoholism. Disgraced and devastated, the school completely abandoned its design program and—taking a cue form its own sad mascot—opened up a college for budget-conscious live-action role players.
5. Icy and Nicey
Two wizard snowballs that supposedly could make it summer by bouncing off each other, Icy and Nicey were the wish fulfillment of University of Northwest Territories students who experienced warm weather six minutes a year. Unfortunately, out of crippling desperation the college began to believe the mascots actually could end the blistering cold climate, adding undo pressure to the minimum wage workers inside the costumes. Soon a religious cult was formed around Icy and Nicey as students and faculty both forsook all classes and sporting events to honor their new gods. But when the mascots not only failed to produce summer but also were mistakenly thought to have consumed two still-living humans, the students burned the college to the ground, making for the warmest day anyone could ever remember.
6. Pigskin
Less a celebration of school pride than an inadvertent statement against rampant obesity, Pigskin didn’t so much provoke cheers as unintentionally remind students to get their cholesterol levels checked. The football-inspired named mascot—who for some reason always carried a basketball—appeared to have great difficulty getting off the bench, much less perform any of the high-energy, non-wheezing antics one expects from a halftime show. Scared that Pigskin might suffer a major coronary attack while waving or smiling politely, Normack College released a statement saying that they had sent their “beloved mascot to a farm upstate,” which many took as code for the dean having had him to put to sleep.
7. Prilosec OTC
Most colleges try to distance themselves from overt product placement for fear it can tarnish their academic reputations. But cash-strapped University of South Delton was so desperate for any funds that it immediately dumped its beloved puppy mascot for one promising quick relief from acid reflux. Gone were the school cheers and fun antics during football games as a walking box and pill now spent a good three hours listing all of the drug’s possible side effects. Within two weeks only the most severe heartburn sufferers were attending games and the university closed the athletic program for good. They then gave the Prilosec OTC mascot tenure and made it head of its chemistry, literature and political science departments.
8.???
What happens when you have to reach a compromise between 86 mascot designers, who all want a say in the final costume? You end up with this—a school symbol that the students and committee greeted with outright horror. Combining the Commack College dean’s love of cats, the school’s green color and a denim jacket someone was looking to pawn off, the mascot defied explanation or any attempt to give it a name. Instead, “???” wandered around campus, causing students to pee in fright and attendance to drop a whopping 96%. To this day the mascot roams a now abandoned school marked off by police warning tape as rumors swirl that somehow “???” has managed to breed.
Whis is your favorite discontinued college mascot? Let us knwo in the comments!
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