Happy new year, Point Park Students and Mascot fans alike, but only to those two. To everyone else, you’re on your own.

Last year, I went into this column with some ideas for Mascot Mania, but this year, I’m going in totally blind, though not unintentionally. With basketball and hockey having just started, I’m hoping that will bring in a new year of mascot news and mascot content in general. To start the year off, I want to talk about the mascot on everyone’s minds: The Seattle Kraken. 

Well, maybe. As of the time of writing, the Kraken don’t have an official mascot yet, but that’s what I wanted to talk about: What should the Kraken’s mascot be? How do they pull something like that off? Do they pull a Point Park and make the mascot different from the team name? How should the mascot act?

All good questions! While other analysts have posted their thoughts and theories, I think coming up with mascot ideas is fun, and I’m going to allow myself to indulge in it first. It’s the new year, I’m allowed to be selfish. 

So, to start off: I don’t think the suited mascot should be a kraken or an octopus. It’ll look kind of silly, and there’s big potential here for something epic and fantastical. Even Gritty posted a photo of an octopus mascot costume on twitter once the Kraken’s name was announced, so like, it’s no secret that it will look kind of dumb to make the mascot a tentacle’d anything. Instead, I think we should go Disney-on-Ice with this whole thing. I think the Kraken should be a GIANT ANIMATRONIC that is either brought out onto the ice for cool pre-game theatrics, or it should be incorporated into the stadium. Imagine it. Seeing signs of the Kraken as you walk through the stadium on your way to your seat. You pass what appears to be a mural made to make the wall look like it’s got a hole in it, then you see an eye, the size of three basketballs, peering out and into the crowd of incoming fans. There are robotic tentacles snaking from the rafters down the sides of the wall. Maybe they do a little dance when the Kraken score. The guy who dances and pulls out the T-shirt cannon? He’s canonically a sea captain or a pirate whose fortune was stolen by the Kraken. He can also just be a fish or something but i think the sea captain idea is cooler. It may not hit with kids, though, so I get it if it’s a little too high concept for Seattle. The reason the Kraken haunts the sea captain? Hockey. He wants the ultimate piece of treasure for his hoard: The Stanley Cup. And he will terrorize the inhabitants of the arena until they bring that cup home to him. 

Anyways, that is just my own, superior idea for how the Kraken should be executed, but I’m sure I’ll have fun analyzing the mascot no matter how it turns out. 

One take that I wanted to respond to is one that I’ve seen tossed around in the Mascotsphere: “Gritty should be the goal.” 

I understand that for marketers and investors, a mascot wild in popularity like Gritty is desirable. It could make a hockey fan out of someone who just got into it for the mascot memes. It means merchandise. However, as someone who believes that mascots can be good in different ways, I think it would be foolish to try to replicate what Gritty created. For best results, I think what the Kraken needs more than anything else is to find its own image.

So, there you have it. Those are my thoughts on the Seattle Kraken and their mascot yet-to-be. I was rather excited to talk about this subject, and I have been ever since I learned about the name of the team. 

Here’s to the new year, Point Park, and the new mascots that come with it.