If you have ever been to Singapore, then maybe you know all about hush hush Holly and all her friends. Singapore has this terrific campaign for developing manners in public transportation riders. They have about five mascots who all represent different aspects of being a good passengers.
Yep, that’s all of them. A bit of social engineering through super cuteness. I thought this was as good as it was going to get in terms of mascots. How silly I was! That was all pre-Taiwan and pre-Maji Meow.
The four of us who were in Taipei together – Mo, Wade, Iris, and myself- have developed a bit of an obesssion with Maji Meow. He….or she, we are not really sure……is the mascot for Taipei Metro. To help riders out, they post wonderful posters like the following ones on every train.
The last one is the best of course, because Maji is crying over how badly they are being treated by a fellow passenger. The metro also had photo booths at almost every single station, where you could take a fun photo with a background/border that was inspired by the location of the station. We of course took a few of these.
Already we were obvious in bliss in terms of mascots when we found ourselves on a gondola to the top of a mountain in Taipei. See, here we are:
It was in the course of entering the station for the gondola that we discovered another amazing set of mascots:
So now our mascot appetite is full BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE! The restaurant we had an amazing meal of steamed soup buns at had mascots too!
Stop stop you say? No more mascots you beg of me? No, more mascots!
Random mascots in front of Lover’s Bridge near the Taiwan Straits in Taipei.
Okay okay now we are done. NO WE ARE NOT WE ARE JUST BEGINNING!
No actually we are almost done. One more mascot. We of course went up to the observation decks in Taipei 101. One of the things we wanted to see was the tuned mass damper. It is a 30 million ton ball of steel at the top of the tower designed to keep the building stable during typhoon winds and earthquakes. Basically if the ball is moving, the building is moving the opposite way. Here is a great video of the most it has ever moved
So it is moving 100cm on each side. Doesn’t sound like a lot until you remember that this is a 30 million TON steel ball. Now it seems like a lot right? And in case you do not know what a tuned mass damper does here are the damper mascots, Damper Babies, explaining it to you
Yes that’s right: This marvel of engineering…has it’s own mascots!
Okay, that’s all for the mascots! More on Taipei 101 in a later blog post.
Saya cinta Maji Meow!
Jumpa Lagi
Kevin
Gee, and here I was all impressed by Ronald McDonald…….he looks cheap in comparison to all these guys!!! lol
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The mascot thing is just perfectly Asian, specifically East Asian. It was interesting to see how much of Korean and Japanese culture Taiwan has adopted.
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