The “Friendlies”, the five Olympic mascots, have taken over Beijing. Well, not quite, but two years before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, merchandize is a big deal. Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini, which together form the sentence “Beijing Welcomes You”, come in all forms and shapes: as stuffed animals, on key chains, badges, t-shirts, baseball caps, backpacks, building blocks, posters, pencils, cups, umbrellas and basically everything else you can imagine. There is some merchandize with the Olympic emblem, too, but the mascots are really dominating everything.
There are only a few designated shops that are allowed to sell Olympics merchandize, such as the official Olympics store next to Tian’anmen Square, the merchandize corner in the Great Hall of the People as well as a couple of department stores on Wangfujing, which have big posters and banners with the Olympics emblem hanging outside to ensure that you won’t just walk by.
I’ve been taking lots of pictures. At first, it felt a bit odd to take photos of counters inside a store, or of huge stuffed animals. But I noticed pretty soon that the Chinese are doing the exact same thing. Wherever the mascots are displayed, people take out their cameras.
Last Wednesday night, the Paralympics mascot was first shown to the public in a big ceremony, which I meant to watch on TV, but missed as I was stuck in traffic. The Paralympics are going to take place from September 6 to September 17, 2008. The mascot (a cow in the colours pink, white, green, and yellow) is now also for sale in the stores. It always looks a bit lonely to me sitting packed inside a box all by itself seperated from the other five mascots, but I’m sure there’ll be lots of people to take it home with them and free it from its plastic cage.
Does it seem like the Chinese are the main ones buying these, or are there tourists picking them up?
I think it’s mostly bought by Chinese at this point in time, although I’ m sure that people who usually buy the Olympics collectibles buy the Beijing 2008 collectibles, too. I asked one of the shop assistants whether they’ve been selling a lot of merchandize and she said “Yes.” The merchandize is fairly expensive by Chinese standards though. So the majority of people who come to these stores just want to take a look.
Does anyone know how much they sell them for and Where we can buy them in North America?
I don’t think you can get them in a store in North America. I’ll check again, but I don’t think they are selling them abroad, yet. Of course, there’s always ebay, but I’d be careful with that. There are probably lots of fakes on the internet.