NEWSY: 'The Ring’ invades 2012 Olympics

2012 London Olympics organizers, unveiled last May 19 the new mascots for the Games. Introducing Wenlock and Mandeville. 

Officials boasted that focus groups of children helped form the designs of the mascots. The natural defense of the mascots is that they're not designed for adults, but for the children who will convince adults to buy them a bunch of merchandise with said mascots.

Wenlock is named after Much Wenlock, a village in Shropshire which held an event in the 19th century which inspired the modern Games. Mandeville is named after the hospital at which the Paralympic Games were founded. Though both sound like Tolkein characters, the names are quite good and are the only thing that makes the mascots distinctly British.

Olympic mascots have always been the object of scorn, but these two, uh, things take the absurdity to a whole new level. There's a complicated backstory to the characters which was written by a children's author. It explains why the mascots have one eye (it's a camera lens to see the world) and yellow lights on tops of their heads (an homage to London taxicabs), but fails to tell the tale of why they look like the much dreaded character  in the Japanese blockbuster horror movie, The Ring.

London 2012 released a video explaining the pair's origins as well.