For a full year, controversy has been raging in Vancouver over a Vanoc oversight:
Unlike “official” 2010 mascots Quatchi, Miga and Sumi, Mukmuk the marmot was designated a “sidekick.” No Mukmuk plush toys, pins or t-shirts would grace the shelves of Hudson’s Bay, said Vanoc, ensuring that B.C. schoolchildren would never learn his name.
But Mukmuk, a Vancouver Island marmot, is a real B.C. animal, unlike Quatchi, Miga and Sumi—a sasquatch, “sea-bear” and “animal guardian-spirit” respectively—residents, columnists and bloggers and bloggers and bloggers complained. (And he wears a bright orange toque, just like a real Vancouver Island redneck.)
So far, Mukmuk—the only mascot with a Facebook fan group—has made only cameo appearances: once appearing in a Vanoc video handing out Vancouver 2010 invitations to hot-chocolate drinking headliners, Quatchi, Miga and Sumi, another time, cheering-on their antics from the sidelines.
No more. Mukmuk merch has hit the shelves of the Bay. Mukmuk, though an “official product,” will retain his “sidekick” status—forever an outsider, like a real British Columbian.