We Still Don’t Know What the Heck the Please Touch Museum’s New Mascot Is
But if we’ve learned anything from our whole Gritty experience, it might be that we don’t really need to.
Gritty (L) was in attendance when Squiggles debuted on Sunday. | Photo via the Please Touch Museum
Last time we wrote about the Please Touch Museum’s new mascot, we asked readers: “Who’s Got the Worst Mascot: The Flyers or the Please Touch Museum?”
That was, of course, the day that Gritty came into the world, and the world was changed. We admit: Like most of Philadelphia, we were terrified upon first sight of the heinous orange creature. But we came around. We warmed up to him.
In that vein, it’s high time for a reevaluation of the Please Touch Museum’s mascot: the newly named Squiggles.
Squiggles debuted in real-life form (if you can call it that) this past Sunday, when the Please Touch Museum revealed the results of a roughly monthlong naming contest. Until then, Squiggles existed only as a logo, in the style of an amateurish drawing — a two-dimensional, highlighter-yellow blob. And so it was hard to determine what Squiggles actually was.
Our new mascot needs a name, and you get to choose! Visit our website for your chance to vote NOW through September 25th! https://t.co/yqXBtQqF8z #LovePTM #PTMForAll pic.twitter.com/Wgvz80LbHi
— Please Touch Museum (@pleasetouch) September 12, 2018
Now that the Please Touch Museum has officially revealed Squiggles, we can confidently say that we still don’t know what on earth it is. But maybe that’s OK.
If we’ve learned anything from this whole Gritty experience, it’s that we don’t need to know what a mascot is to love it. We can question its sanity, its creepy looking smile and googly eyes, its choice of Kim Kardashian-esque late-night tweets, and we can still embrace it.
So we’re giving Squiggles another chance, even if its real-life form (again, if you can call it that) doesn’t quite align with the logo/drawings we saw of him. Turns out Squiggles is actually purple, not yellow — plus, Squiggles is noseless (like Gritty), plush-looking, with round eyes and a wild mess of hair.
https://twitter.com/pleasetouch/status/1049284556027834368
Anyway, Trish Wellenbach, president and CEO of the Please Touch Museum, says that knowing what Squiggles is isn’t the point.
The museum wanted to create a mascot that was unique (think: never-before-imagined beasts like Gritty or the Phanatic) and “captured the essence of what it means to be a child … to discover new things, to be creative, and to learn and explore.”
“The kids loved the color, the eyes, the playfulness,” Wellenbach said of Squiggles’s debut on Sunday. “I think the team worked hard and thought we would reflect that, and I think we hit a home run.”
Below, you can watch Squiggles’s debut video, in which the mascot drives a SEPTA bus, rides a merry-go-round, and goes grocery shopping, courtesy of the Please Touch Museum.
