3. Nightmare fuel college football mascots: Purdue Pete, Purdue Boilermakers
Another mascot who is a man with a plastic face who carries around a weapon. No, thank you! Purdue Pete is the latest Pete to feed our nightmares on the gridiron. If Purdue’s typically bad brand of football doesn’t keep you up at night, the stoic never-smiling mug of Purdue Pete sure will. While it’s not a shotgun, he carries a hammer around to bash your brains in while you sleep.
Purdue Pete is single-handedly responsible for young American children not wanting to pursue a career as a boilermaker. He takes a proud profession, one where you get to work with your hands, and makes it seem like something more in line of a mortician. When you take one look into his eyes, it’s certain death. He is the basilisk of the Big Ten. He might as well be a snake mascot.
Like his equally terrifying Pete counterpart over in Stillwater, if he just had a regular dude’s face, it wouldn’t be so bad. Because a man or a woman can smile and display emotion while they tote around a sledgehammer. A simple grin of “hey, I love my job as a boilermaker” would go a long way and he wouldn’t be interpreted as the Michael Myers of West Lafayette, Indiana.
For the many board of regents out there, if you’re going to have a mascot of a cartoon version of a human, probably don’t do it. Again, you’re trying too hard and just let a human be a human, please. Also, take it easy on the props. Remember you’re trying to appeal to kids and not terrify them into thinking they’re being hunted for sport at a football game. They’re kids for Pete’s sake!