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Zoich

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The design of Zoich, the proposed mascot for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Zoich (Cyrillic: Зойч, pronounced [zojtɕ]) was a proposed mascot for the XXII Winter Olympics, which took first place in the official online poll to select a mascot for the 2014 Sochi games. Despite being a popular Internet character, the committee chose not to introduce it to the final round of the voting. Upon introduction and until the end of the online voting, it was the most popular mascot from those submitted. It also took only about 40 minutes for Zoich to take the top spot.[1]

Background

September 1, 2010: The Organizing Committee of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic and Paralymplic Games in conjunction with the newspaper Izvestia announces a competition to select the mascots for the 2014 games open to anyone wishing to enter. The competition receives 24,048 entries from across Russia and Russians abroad.

September 10, 2010: Moscow artist and designer Yegor Zhgun enters an original sketch of an imaginary frog, naming it "Zoich".

According to its author, the idea of Zoich was indeed influenced by Hypnotoad from Futurama.[1]

Description of the mascot

Zoich is a fuzzy blue frog. The Olympic Rings rotate in its eyes, taking the role of pupils: black, yellow, and blue in the right eye and red and green in the left. In its mouth, the frog holds a ski pole and a Russian Imperial Crown sits atop its head. The mascot takes its name from the year "2014" as it is represented on the Olympiad's logo: The numbers 2, 0, and 1 as they are represented look like the Latin Z, O, and I. The number 4 looks like the Russian letter Ч, which is like the English "ch".[2] Many Russian-speaking people read "2014" as "Zoich" upon presentation of Sochi-2014 logo. Zhgun's description of his mascot: "The Olympic Rings in his eyes spell the progress of Olympic ideals; the tsars’ crown on his head recalls authority and faith."

Subsequent event

The original idea behind the mascot found large support among visitors to the official voting site, and Zoich reached the top spot in the voting in roughly 40 minutes, where he stayed through the conclusion of the voting.[1]

After Zhgun posted an animated clip (which took about two months of development[1]) of his mascot on YouTube on November 8, 2010, finally showing Zoich in motion, the press dubbed the mascot "Hypnotoad", referencing its obvious resemblance to the character Hypnotoad from American animated TV series Futurama.[3] In July 2011, Futurama referenced the influence of the Hypnotoad on Zoich; the opening sequence of the episode "All the Presidents' Heads", the 20th episode of the show's sixth season, shows a brief clip from Zhgun's original Zoich animated clip mounted on a television screen.

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Создание Зойча" [Creation of Zoich]. Retrieved 2011-06-24.
  2. ^ Олимпийский талисман Сочи-2014
  3. ^ Информационное агентство «Росбалт» В конкурсе талисманов «Сочи-2014» к последнему дню приема работ лидирует «гипножаба»
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