The Sixers long search to replace Hip-Hop as mascot was set to come to an end tomorrow. The team has a “mascot unveiling” ceremony scheduled at the Franklin Institute at 1 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.
However, fans got a sneak preview on what creature the mascot will be, as well as his name. According to Grantland’s Zach Lowe, the team, with the help of a thousand Delaware Valley children, has created the newest fan of the franchise. Franklin, a blue fluffy dog, will be the chosen one to replace Hip-Hop, the urban bunny that was essentially fired by the then-Adam Aron led-Sixers.
Here’s Lowe with the scoop:
“The Sixers consulted several experts, including Dave Raymond, the original Phillie Phanatic, but they handed most of the creative duties to 1,000 kids ages 6 to 10 in the Delaware Valley, says Tim McDermott, the team’s chief marketing officer. The team’s research showed that most fans become fans within that age range, and so the Sixers decided to build a mascot kids that age would like.
Team officials met with the kids in groups and started by showing them about 40 designs to get a sense of the cohort’s general tastes. Some of those designs were already in existence — actual mascots, superheroes, and other known characters, McDermott says. Some were original renderings. There were multiple Ben Franklins and other characters that played on Philly’s colonial and Revolutionary history.
The team asked the kids everything: Should the mascot have fur? What color should it be? Should it dunk? Should it be tall? Fat? Short?
The team revised designs and narrowed the field after each round of meetings with local kids. Ben Franklin was out, but dogs were in. The kids liked fluffy things and blue things, and the Sixers zeroed in on the Franklin character. It was among two finalists; McDermott won’t disclose the other, but he says he had guessed the kids would have chosen it over Franklin the dog. They didn’t, and so the Sixers’ on-court representative will be a big, furry, blue dog called Franklin. Ben Franklin himself might not be of much interest to young children, but the Sixers are at least naming the mascot for him.
Franklin will not have a last name or some funked-out middle initial. He is not Franklin D. Dogg. He is just Franklin, and we are thankful for that bit of understatement.
He will dribble, and dunk, and do all the crazy stunts fans expect of mascots now, McDermott says. He won’t need a sleek alternate costume for those things; the fluffy one is designed to accommodate full mascot freedom.”
Truthfully, it’s probably a victory just for the fact that it was not Phil E. Moose, once a candidate to become the third mascot. That would have led to much time wasted attempting to explain to people what a moose has to do with the 76ers, or the city of Philadelphia. Over three years later, the connection still has not become clear. But he’s now out of the picture, as alas we now have Franklin.
Be sure to follow Franklin on Twitter at @SixersFranklin, as he apparently already has the beloved Phillie Phanatic beat on the social media scene.
