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The Olympic Mascots have been going since 1968, the characters have changed over time to try and reflect the cultural as well stylistic trends reflecting the hosting nations.

It wasn’t until 1980 in Moscow for the summer Olympic games that the mascot really caught the publics imagination in the shape of Misha the bear cub! He even had his own cartoon!

In 2010 for the Winter Olympic games, the mascot Miga (pictured above) was one of three (four if you include Mukmuk!) designed by the same team to commemorate the games. There was some controversy over the mascots with some people up in arms as they felt that they didn’t represent British Columbia and Canada effectively.

In my view mascots are designed to represent a nation and will always cause controversy of sorts, Abraham Lincoln once commented "You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time."

My own personal favourites are Cobi, designed by Javier Mariscal for the Barcelona games held in 1992, as it reminds of my holiday there. I also think that Athena and Phevos designed for the Athens games summer 2004 are genius for tapping into their rich cultural history. Plato would be proud!

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