Every fanbase deserves a good mascot.
In 1979, the Seattle Mariners knew this, and got tired of hiring the legendary barnstorming Famous San Diego Chicken to entertain fans.
In the interim, they fielded calls from dreamers who had the mascot pitch of a lifetime, and soon the organization got to thinking.
Instead of coming up with a mascot in house, why not let every potential mascot into the Kingdome for an International Mascot Contest?
On the fateful day of August 17, 1979, a wonderful cast of characters threw their hat into the ring for a panel of three unnamed judges to decide who shall represent the franchise forever.
There are their stories, and this is their tier list.
Everything I’m writing about is from this single source, a KIRO7 article and local news piece from last July which is SPECTACULAR and you should all watch/read it, preferably after you’re done with this since I do some paraphrasing.
With that being said, let’s see which costumes bopped and which ones flopped.
The F Tier
Murray Mouse and Sunny Deer
It’s hard to do a worse branding move than having a mouse character with the last name Mouse and a first name that starts with M.
There is no way this character could take off, it was built in a plane without wings.
That alone is F tier, but the fact that they paired him up with a DEER of all things is extra egregious. Was ripping off Minnie Mouse somehow a bridge too far when you’ve already done THAT to Mickey?
Not saying that cross-species couples can’t work, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are an S-tier item, but c’mon man that doesn’t even look like a deer.
It looks like a mouse, and Sunny Mouse is a lazy Minnie Mouse knockoff name in the same vein, BUT the Seattle Local News article says Sunny Deer on two different occasions, so who am I to judge.
Alos, I can suspend disbelief when it's a frog and a pig, but NOT when it's a mouse and a deer. That would not work. I’m sorry. That’d either be a horrifically large mouse or a ludicrously small deer.
Whoever you two were, you failed on every level.
Unknown No. 1
A handful of mascots’ names did not survive the long journey from 1979 to present, and this is the first of the bunch. This time, it’s a good thing it was forgotten.
Personal thoughts on clowns aside, the WHITE SOX ALREADY HAD A WELL KNOWN CLOWN MASCOT AT THE TIME.
ANDY THE CLOWN WAS A THING FOR ALMOST TWO DECADES AT THAT POINT.
COME ON NOW YOU CAN’T JUST RIP OFF ANOTHER MASCOT.
F TIER IT IS.
The D Tier
Unknown No. 2
It really should be lower because of the sponsorship, but wow do I love the idea of this thing as a Pizza Hut mascot.
In the 1970s, around when the M’s were holding this contest, Pizza Hut had this character named Pizza Hut Pete.
A man with a mustache selling pizza. Daring today aren’t we
(Gotta say tho, I need this sticker)
Anyways, nobody liked him because he sucked and Pizza Hut was out of the mascot game until the nightmare fuel “Pizzahead” experiment of the mid-90s.
Why
But the mascot from the contest. That silly dog with a clown horn. That’s a brand mascot you can set your watch to if you’re Pizza Hut. Kids already love it!
I appreciate whoever’s in this costume’s big picture play of knowing the M’s weren’t gonna pick them, so they were just hoping to catch the eye of a Pizza Hut exec who might be in the crowd.
It sadly didn’t work, and Pizza Hut let generations of kids down.
HOWEVER
Pizza Hut does have a dog mascot.
His name is “Pizza Puch”, and he is very popular in Central America.
There’s even a costume!
So if “Pizza Pooch” was the original character's name, which is certainly a possibility, I’d advise the OG (if you’re still around) to lawyer up because I think there might be something there.
Bruno the Bear
I like that there’s no extras here, it’s just a bear costume.
No hat, no jersey, just vibes.
Unknown No. 3
Some insane effort went into this costume, but this is about the least Marinery thing you can imagine.
Yes, dragonflies exist in Seattle. Yes, they are sometimes near the Puget Sound. But I just can’t imagine linking my name to a gigantic bug if I’m the ocean team.
NEXT.
The C Tier
Pelican Pete
The top hat and pipe are both EXCELLENT touches. This is a pelican of wealth and taste.
Look at him go. He’s walkin like he owns the place. That’s a pelican who owns at least five shady offshore businesses.
The reason ol Petey here isn’t higher is because I wouldn’t trust the Martiners to leave what’s good about him alone.
Darn tobacco being poison would have probably got the pipe out of the picture pretty fast, and they would have had to upgrade the costume eventually.
Given the pro sports world’s next attempt at a Pelican mascot costume years later, a new costume can EASILY go off the deep end.
WHY IS IT RED
I think by not picking Pelican Pete, Seattle saved him from himself.
The character’s defining traits are incompatible with the MLB stage. I hope he found something to do with the costume and comically large pipe. Whatever that could possibly be.
Thudias T. Thunderbird
“If lost return me to Sea Tac Mall '' is by far the best part of this costume.
It’s so perfect.
I wonder if he worked there or borrowed the costume from the mall. Or hopefully an alternative funnier option.
It’s a funny, high quality costume with a great name, but it’s not right for the Mariners.
The people who should not have let Thudias T. Thunderbird exit the building without mascot contract in hand were the Seattle Seahawks.
The Seahawks were mostly mascotless until 1998, and their current one, Blitz, is the most forgettable mascot in the league.
If the Seahawks had adopted a bird with the name Thudias T. Thunderbird back in 1979 I guarantee you people would not forget it exists today.
Keep the sign, too. Probably make it say different things, but that would be a really fun way for a mascot to connect with fans.
Fannie the Kanga
A kanga with no Roo is pretty funny
A kangaroo in general is pretty funny because it’s Seattle, which is about the polar opposite of the Australian Outback.
That’s all I got. Solid bit, but a bit that would get old fast and have them holding a new contest in record time.
Unknown No. 4
It’s like if Jazz Bear was Purdue Pete.
The Baby (A Tier) and Ye Olde Mariner (C Tier)
We’ll get to the Obvious One in a minute, but this is also the only existing photo of Ye Olde Mariner off to the right.
It’s an old sea hag riff on the West Virginia Mountaineer, and I absolutely see the vision. However, his costume is more Christopher Columbus than Deadliest Catch, and that’s the exact wrong take.
I get he’s supposed to be old, but you can’t be old and regal in mascot world. Old and grizzled works so much better.
NOW THE BABY ON THE OTHER HAND
The baby was a man named Fred Kenney who, per the local news article,
“crawled on his hands and knees from the left field wall, only wearing a large adult diaper, all the way to home plate. When he stood up, The Baby was scraped and bloody from his arms and legs, after dragging them across some 350 feet across the Kingdome’s Astroturf.”
OH
MY
GOD
That is the most metal thing I’ve ever heard.
I am choosing to interpret this as a piece of performance art. It’s either that or a bizarrely specific fetish of Fred’s and I really hope it’s the former.
Because DAMN is that some commitment. Giving yourself turf burns for 350 feet because you are playing a baby because a baby would be an absurd mascot so therefore this is some metacommentary on the absurdness of the contest if it allows for a grown ass man to wear a diaper and injure himself as he portrays a caricature of an infant.
That’s art. There is not another context in the world for that exact sentence to be possible while taking place in front of a large crowd of people.
The Baby finished tied for second, because how could he not? Guarantee you he stuck in the minds of folks who were in attendance more than any other mascot there.
It also may have provided indirect inspiration for another grown man baby character down the line.
In 2017, An aspiring musician named DaBaby did a publicity stunt where he wore only an adult diaper to promote his music.
It worked, and he briefly became a superstar. It did not end like that, but that is in fact how it started.
What is old becomes new again.
That’s rebirth baby.
B Tier
Herc and Gorty
A key part of any entertainment tandem is how well the two names roll off the tongue. Tom and Jerry, Penn and Teller, Hall and Oates, etc. all sound super nice when said aloud. A good mix of hard and soft sounds goes a long way.
That’s not at all the case with Herc and Gorty. That combination of consonants is disgusting.
I love it.
Especially considering neither are actual names. That chicken is so grotesque no that human name can fit it properly. Thus enters Herc.
On the other side is Gorty. I know nothing about this character’s story, but he looks like he's really dumb. If your name is Gorty, you’ve gotta be comically stupid that’s just the rule. This character looks like it passes the rule.
There’s potential here, but I don’t think a baseball field is the best place to show it.
My idea, since the duo names are so similar (and neither sound good), have them replace Rick and Morty for the final season. Keep everything else about the show the same, but have these two as the lead.
I’ve never seen the show, but I’m dead confident it’d work.
Dolly Duck
Why is this B tier when the Mickey Mouse ripoff is F tier? Because this is a Dolly Parton parody, and that’s delightful.
That’s the one direction you could swerve to not have people think of Daisy or Donald Duck when seeing this mascot, so I applaud the move.
Great concept, it’s just not right for Seattle. Dolly is still a beloved public figure today, but it’s all Southern Charm, where if Seattle ever tried to court a country image that’s long gone by now.
Get the Nashville Sounds on the phone and then we’re talking.
The A Tier
Big Foot
I love this stupid thing so much.
This squatch isn’t intimidating in the slightest, it looks confused, depressed, and like he’d rather be anywhere else. Incredible stuff.
This is another case of Seattle saving a mascot from itself, because years later the city would return to this concept and it wasn’t nearly as lovable.
The Seattle Sonics (rip) ditched the lovable literal children’s book character Wheedle for the boring Squatch.
That’s a squatch that takes itself seriously, and that type of squatch is no fun. The realistic take on the mythical creature is unnerving, whereas the Classic Big Foot is relatable.
This creature would be a hit with today’s self-deprecating youth, but that would have required a remarkable amount of foresight back in 1979, so I’m cool with Big Foot (two words!) remaining as a curiosity of the archives.
The S Tier
The Fish
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
This rules. Perfect brand association with the Mariners name and pitchfork from the logo. This is Poseidon in fish form. It’s brilliant.
Plus, the nickname simply being “The Fish” is as San Diego Chicken as it gets.
There’s no other team that could pull off a fish mascot, so you don’t even have to name it for people to know who and what it is.
Plus, it did this hilariously uncomfortable looking motion while walking, presumably so the head and tail could be level.
It’s the perfect amount of stupid, I would have loved for it to stick around.
Kingdome Gnomes
I love groups of Mascots. I love Gnomes. I love rhymes. This is perfect.
These things even have a small connection to the Pacific Northwest.
The costumes are pretty rough but hey that’s gnomes baby.
But there are problems. First, the rhyme with Kingdome is long gone by now, that building was never made to last so you’d have to rename to just “the Gnomes” which is slightly less fun.
Second, having multiple mascots is a tough sell for a pro sports team, who typically only want to send one out to events and stuff, and gnomes don’t have massive differences to each other.
So I don’t think they should have been the mascot, but rather the mascots who race during the seventh inning stretch. Fans would LOVE that.
Every park deserves its own sausages, and I think it's a shame Seattle let its opportunity slip.
The Hungarian or Bulgarian Rabbit
First of all, ignore the baseball player man. He was just happy to be there. I refuse to believe he had any hope of winning with a costume that lazy.
Second of all, the photo says the Bulgarian Rabbit but the slideshow says the Hungarian Rabbit.
The man in the rabbit suit was Stoyan Tanev, a Bulgarian Ringling Bros. acrobat who did flips in-costume, due to his nickname being Rabbit in Bulgarian.
The name was almost certainly the Bulgarian Rabbit, but I think it would be funny if the most Bulgarian man of all time named the character the Hungarian Rabbit for no reason.
The name is also the reason this is so high. Imagine this character existing today.
People would ask “Why is the Seattle Mariners mascot a Bulgarian Rabbit?” and the answer would be “A Bulgarian man showed up in a rabbit costume.”
I love that interaction. I would love for it to take place countless times over Mariners history.
Plus, mascots weren’t really doing acrobatic stunts at the time, but plenty do now, so The Bulgarian Rabbit would absolutely have staying power.
Excellent mascot, should have absolutely landed a contract with somebody.
The Winning Tier
Now all of the mascots we’ve seen so far, both excellent and otherwise, did not win the contest.
The Baby, The Bulgarian Rabbit, and Pelican Pete all tied for second.
What could possibly tower above them?
Spacie the Needle
ITS THE SPACE NEEDLE ON STILTS
Seattlites love that damn building so much. Mild-mannered construction worker Brian Keil had heard about the costume contest on the radio during his job.
He was on stilts at the time, due to construction, and decided to lean back against a wall and daydream about what could win the contest.
The first thing his eyes saw — the Space Needle itself.
Thus sparked the costume that inspired a generation.
He repurposed a garbage can lid for the head, sticking a spitoon and a CB Antenna to become the needle itself.
Wonderful.
Now…I like this a lot. It’s extremely goofy, unmistakably Seattle, and has literally nothing else like it in mascot world. All large mascots these days are inflatable, none use stilts.
HOWEVER
I would have voted for the Fish. That thing had staying power, and Spacie clearly didn’t.
Spacie still threw out a first pitch, showed up for a handful of home games, but didn’t even make it to the end of the season.
Some say he didn’t get a contract since it wasn’t in the Mariners’ budget, and the contest only promised a winner would be “discovered”, another legend goes that mobility issues with the stilts forced Spacie into an early retirement.
Either way, I don’t think he was the missed opportunity here. Spacie is perfect for the winner of a contest like this, which clearly did not have longevity as a concern.
Either way, all’s well that ends well, and I do like Mariner Moose a fair bit.
Good quality ‘scot.
The only mascots from this group that I would rank ahead of ol’ Moosey are The Fish and The Bulgarian Rabbit. Two perfect backstories dropped right in the M’s lap, that they unfortunately fumbled.
The gnomes could still exist. That much I believe.
Either way, this contest should be a lesson to all MLB teams with less than stellar mascots (which is a couple of y’all, but that’s a story for another time), encourage fans to get wild and show up in costume. You’ll get to see things you would have never came up with in a million years, and be all the better for it.
Like I always say, you’ll never meet a Bulgarian man in a Rabbit suit if you don’t invite him into your home.