This Day in Anthro History: Roni and the 1980 Winter Olympics

As the 2018 Winter Olympics play out in PyeongChang, we look back 38 years to this day in 1980, when the opening ceremony for that year's games took place in Lake Placid, NY (although events actually started the day before).

Representing the games that year was none other than Roni, a friendly humanoid raccoon who is as comfortable on skis as he is in a trash can...

While the anthropomorphic animal mascot is pretty commonplace these days, as far as I can tell, this was the first Olympics to use an anthro critter as the face of the games!  (Previous games had used animal mascots, but none walked/skied/skated like humans that I can find...!)

I think a raccoon was a pretty outstanding choice...it's a native animal, the mask is meant to resemble the eyewear worn by winter athletes, and the rings on the tail are a great nod to the Olympic rings (assuming that was the intention...!).