Here it comes! After a long wait, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics finally officially opened today. After 14 years, Beijing has once again become the host of the Olympic Games, becoming the first "double Olympic city" in history to host both the Summer Olympic Games and the Winter Olympic Games.
The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games still maintained the high standard of 2008, and in the process of the opening ceremony, in addition to the heroic Chinese athletes, there was also a figure that everyone was already familiar with - the mascot "Ice Pier".
"Rock Sugar Panda" ice pier
This cute panda born in 2019 has aroused crazy discussion among netizens and has continued to this day. Sina Weibo topic #Ice Pier# As of January 21, 2022, there have been more than 50 million reads and 50,000 discussions.
Gu Yu data crawled 403 of them, and found that many of the discussions focused on the shape, design and prototype of the ice pier, some netizens said that the name "ice pier" was "too cute", some netizens complained about "Pan Pan, Beijing to the ice pier, and pandas", and some netizens called out "cute!" ”。
Some time ago, CCTV News released a video of popular science, which caused many netizens to discuss.
According to the video, the design team of the ice pier is from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, the team initially had the idea of rock sugar gourd, but felt that snacks could not carry the image of a big country, so they replaced the sugar shell with an ice shell, and the inside of the sugar shell was replaced by an animal.
However, it took a long time to consider which animal to use, and at first considered the images of tigers, rabbits, elk, etc., and finally determined the panda, and added the five-ring color "ice ribbon" to the face under the advice of the Olympic Organizing Committee, and the ice pier wrapped in ice shell was finally baked.
CCTV News released an introduction video of the ice pier
After understanding this design creation process, netizens not only continued to call "cute", but also discussed the topic of "food" with great interest. Some people suddenly realized that "it is rock sugar", and some people tentatively asked "Can I eat it?" Some people directly said: "Want to eat!" ”。
According to the Beijing News, after the release of the image of the ice pier mascot in 2019, on the morning of the first batch of licensed goods, the sales of the official online store mascot have exceeded 500,000 yuan, and the offline commodity store is extremely hot, some consumers have been queuing since the early morning, and some goods have almost sold out on the day of sale.
Mascot of previous Winter Olympics
The term "Mascot" is derived from the French Provençal word Mascotto and refers to a person or animal that brings good luck and good luck. The mascot of each Olympic Games represents the local culture of the host country, shows the traditions and virtues of the local people, and also reflects the ideal realm that people all over the world yearn for. In addition, the mascot is used to promote the Olympic Games to children and teenagers.
The first use of mascots in the history of the Olympic Games was the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, since which the mascot has become the main component of the image characteristics of an Olympic Games, of which the thick and cute bear is the most used image in the mascots of the previous Winter Olympic Games, if we even count the panda ice pier, a total of 5 times appeared.
These mascots all convey important local spiritual connotations, and seeing these mascots is like seeing a microcosm of culture around the world. For example, the white tiger, the mascot of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, has been considered the patron saint of Korea since ancient times, symbolizing the protection of athletes, spectators and other Winter Olympic participants, while the 1994 mascot originated from a historical legend in Norway that King Haakon and Princess Christine helped bring peace to medieval and turbulent Norway.
The economic value of the mascot
The reason why the mascot is important, in addition to the local connotation mentioned earlier, it also has a high economic value. Scholar Li Renfang believes that the mascot of the Olympic Games is a kind of "cultural productivity", which forms and materializes the invisible spirit, and the goods authorized by the mascot not only carry the Olympic spirit, but also become a commodity that consumers can see and touch, so it can drive economic growth on a large scale.
In fact, since the birth of the mascot, the derivatives of the Olympic peripherals represented by mascot dolls have gradually become a stable source of income for the host countries of the Olympic Games, and achieved an economic value of 160 million US dollars (about 1.1 billion yuan) during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, setting a record for the Olympic Games.
In the case of the 1976 Montreal Olympics, which accounted for more than 80 percent of total revenue from derivatives, the Games lost $2.4 billion and owed more than $1 billion in debt.
With the success of Los Angeles in 1984 to commercialize the Olympic Games, the "Big Three" of broadcast rights, sponsorship and ticket revenue became the most profitable projects in the Olympic economy, and the profit model of the Olympic Games has changed fundamentally since then.
For example, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, broadcast rights and sponsorship revenues combined accounted for nearly 90% of the main revenue, while peripheral derivatives accounted for only 4.9%, while the Olympic Games made a profit of $146 million.
But compared with these, the derivative economy represented by mascots is the closest to ordinary people.
According to reports, the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee has developed more than 5,000 licensed products, although affected by the global new crown epidemic, offline sales have been impacted, but online sales are still hot. According to the China News Network, as of January 12, 2022, a number of commemorative badges, handmade, hanging racks and other Winter Olympics peripherals in the official online store were sold out, and many netizens left messages saying that "they will be out of stock in a moment.".
Although many people can't personally go to the Winter Olympics to watch the games, they pour their love for the country and sportsmanship into it through cute ice pier dolls and Olympic mascot badges.
From the rock sugar gourd to the ice shell panda, it has undergone countless design modifications to let us see today's ice and snow cute giant panda. With ice piers accompanying us through the Beijing Winter Olympics, the fierce and intense events are also a different beautiful landscape.
Producer 丨 Yang Ruichun Editor-in-Chief 丨 Zhao Hanmo Responsible Editor 丨 Hao Hao Operation 丨 Vegetable Dish Li Jiajia Writing 丨 Dysprosium Number Li Yiyao Data 丨 Dysprosium Number Li Yiyao Dysprosium Number Teresa Design 丨 Dysprosium Number Wang Baodun Editor 丨 Vegetable Dish Production 丨 Tencent News Gu Yu Studio
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