The Flyers unveil a hairy orange material named "gritty" and I like it

If you want to make sure that the mascot's unveiling is going well, make sure there are loads of kids around.

The Sixers brought a group of children to the Franklin Institute when they unveiled the Franklin dog. The Union had a gang of kids at the Philadelphia Zoo when the team showed Phang, the snake with arms and legs. And today, the Philadelphia Flyers had a group of kids at the Please Touch Museum when they introduced Gritty, the team's new mascot.

The kids loved it. They cheered wildly. Of course they did: they were out of school for the day. They have free t-shirts. But it was a good start for the mascot; it was not the Gobbledy Gooker.

Once, as a kid, I went to a Sixers game and they introduced a new mascot, Slam; he was almost immediately booed. It is difficult to introduce a mascot, especially for a team without an easily adaptable animal nickname. The Flyers once had a mascot, Slapshot, for a season in 1976. It did not work. It's hard to know why all these mascots work. Why is the Phillie Phanatic a beloved mascot instead of a creepy green stalker? Why is Mr. Met Deadspin's official mascot instead of a horrible hybrid of human and baseball? You must bring people on board one way or another.

And so, hiring a group of kids for the unveiling of your mascot is a very smart initiative. They will encourage everything they did after they left school. And to be honest, the Flyers mascot was pretty cute. Members of the Fun Patrol Flyers danced with the children for about half an hour before Andrea Helfrich and Shawny Hill, Arena hosts, did sketches with the children. A teacher came on stage and wanted to make the long division. Hill convinced her that the kids were going to have fun instead.

They then launched it on a pre-recorded video about the ongoing renovations at the Flyers Arena. There is nothing that kids love more than the renovations of the arena, depending on how they screamed for this video. It eventually turned into a police story where a private investigator helped construction workers find out who was drawing hockey pieces on the walls and who was replacing the equipment with equipment. hockey. Every good mascot needs a ridiculous story.

And the dance moves:

Finally, Gritty came out. It's a stuff with orange fur, a kind of orange grimace with a big hipster beard. His name is incredibly stupid, almost a travesty of what should be the name of a hockey mascot. If it looks like Phillie Phanatic, it's not a surprise: The Flyers worked with Raymond Entertainment to develop it (the?); Dave Raymond was the original Phillie Phanatic.

"If you look around the league, 29 of the 31 teams have mascots," said Shawn Tilger, director of Flyers Operations, at Deadspin. "We realized how important it is to have an extra voice in the community, especially a voice that can have an attachment to children. Looking at the smiles on these faces of children, I know we have done the right thing.

Tilger said the process of creating Gritty took about two years. The team circumvented the mascot's consultants before settling on Raymond, GOAT's mascot. "Gritty" is almost a parody of a hockey fan, so it's a very good name. I'm just going to assume that it's actually Trent Klatt in this mascot costume.

At the end of the unveiling, the facilitators pushed all the children to shout "We love you, Gritty!". The instant negative reaction on Twitter has sold for me: this mascot is awesome. I love you too, Gritty.