One of my favorite Olympic items is my small plastic Waldi, a souvenir of the 1972 Munich Games. Waldi was the first Olympic mascot, and the first in an occasional 10-part series as we count down the animals, spirits and whatizits that have made the Games more fun. Then it'll be time for Beijing... where you'll see plenty of these folks.
Waldi was created by legendary German designer Otl Aicher (responsible for the Lufthansa logo, among others), whose work with the Munich 1972 organizing committee forged a new relationship between art and sport. The series of posters he created were instant classics, and the subject of an exhibition in London last year. Aicher did not live to see his work properly respected, unfortunately; he died at 69 years old in 1991, the victim of a lawnmower accident.
This faithful blue dog -- chosen specifically for "resistance, tenacity and agility" -- was the first official Olympics mascot -- the 1968 Winter Games at Grenoble made use of a (vaguely disturbing) red ball on skis named "Schuss" who was sold in pin and plastic form. Waldi, on the other hand, was big business. According to the 1972 Official Report, 50 licenses were granted to manufacturers (at a hefty minimum licensing fee of 245,000 Deutschmarks) and 2 million Waldi items -- including my little plastic one -- were sold around the world.
In the run-up to the Games, Waldi became an unwitting symbol of the organizing committee's monetary gigantism. Time reported that after the budget for the Olympic Stadium skyrocketed from US $3.5 million to $63 million, angry Munich taxpayers displayed posters featuring Waldi "using the Olympic Tower as a fire hydrant."
Aicher used a real dog, a dachshund named Cherie von Birkenhof, to model Waldi. Cherie most likely did not have the blue head and tail that were given to the mascot, nor the yellow and green stripes around the midsection. There were a number of different color schemes produced (here's a predominantly yellow one for sale).
It's occasionally reported that Waldi's rings match the five Olympic ones, but look closer. There's no red or black in the Munich palette, a conscious decision on the part of Aicher to not remind anybody of the primary colors of the long-defunct Nazi party. These were to be the "Rainbow Games," the Olympics of optimism... but it was not to be, after all.
The Games are rarely remembered for what they were planned to be remembered for, but Munich 1972 was a landmark for Olympic design, and introduced us to a psychedelic, multicolored pooch that will forever be first. Perhaps you'd like to adopt your own?
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Sportswriter 
