Of all the animal posts on Ferrebeekeeper, by far the most popular is the post relating to the wombat, the stalwart marsupial grazer of Australia. I have since added a post dedicated the (sadly) extinct Diprotodon, a giant wombat which walked the world from 1.5 million to 40,000 years ago. However, it has been a long time since those posts and also a long time since we had a post concerning mascots, so today we once again visit the stolid burrowing quadruped–but this time as interpreted by consumer artists. Here is a short gallery of wombats used as logos or mascots.
When I am playing the best-selling video game Mortal Combat with friends, I have one friend who always calls the game Chortle Wombat in the same sonorous battle-voice used by the (dark-wizard?) narrator of Mortal Combat. Surprisingly, the joke is hilarious to me because I always imagine a troop of ninjas desperately trying to make a dour old wombat laugh.
”]”]”]”]Perhaps the most famous of all wombat mascots is “Fatso, the fat-arsed wombat”, an irreverent spoof of the official Olympic mascots of the Sydney games. It took me a long time to find a printable picture of Fatso and the most charitable interpretation I can put forth is that the character was designed and popularized by larrikins (a word which seems to either denote puckish non-conformists or dirty anarchists) to shine a spotlight on the weight problems sweeping the developing world.
Finally there are a handful of schools and sports teams which feature wombat mascots, although less than I would expect for an animal which is, in its way, an unofficial mascot of Australia.
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September 27, 2011 at 7:08 PM
Mike
Round 2: knock knock jokes.
September 28, 2011 at 10:21 AM
Hieronymo
You win: hilarity!
September 25, 2012 at 2:15 PM
Beatrix
I have quite a few Aussie expat friends here in Shangri-La.
In Aussie slang a ‘wombat’ is a derogative term for human males displaying caddish behavior- like the wombat he ‘eats, shoots, and leaves.’
And I don’t think my friends from Oz are speaking of his dietary habits.
Har dee har har……..;)
September 26, 2012 at 1:42 PM
Wayne
Oh my goodness! I don’t think real wombats are like that…