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23 views • February 28, 2018

Tokyo Unveils Mascots for 2020 Olympics and Paralympics

Tom Ozimek
Mascot-loving Japan has two new characters to get excited about as a pair of futuristic designs with pointy ears and checkered patterns were unveiled Wednesday, February 28, as the mascots for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games. The mascots were decided in a vote by elementary students across Japan and announced before a gym full of cheering kids at a school in Tokyo. A blue-checked character will be the mascot for the Olympics and a pink cherry blossom-inspired one for the Paralympics. The mascot selection panel will now decide on their names. Organisers last year received more than 2,000 entries from the general public in a nationwide competition. From this set of entries they short-listed in December three pairs of designs. Students from more than 200,000 classes at around 16,000 Japanese elementary schools took part in the selection. Each class was allowed to cast just one vote. The winning pair, created by artist Ryo Taniguchi, received around 109,000 votes, more than half of the total and easily beating the other two finalist pairs. The Tokyo 2020 mascots will take the torch from their cuddly PyeongChang counterparts Soohorang, a white tiger, and Bandabi, a black bear.
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