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	Quad City Mallards	85
Notice: The logo and the older logo shown below are included on this page within the parameters of 17 U.S.C. § 107, which states that the reproduction of a copyrighted work for purposes of criticism and/or comment is not an infringement of copyright. No challenge to the copyright of this logo is intended by its inclusion here.

Posted 2003 January 16

"Tonight, on Behind the Toon: Ten years ago, Plucky Duck was on top of the world. He and his friends Babs and Buster Bunny (no relation) had found success with their hit show Tiny Toons. Plans were in the work for a solo show. But success had its price. Plucky became addicted to drugs. He failed out of Acme Looniversity. Directors refused to work with him because of his erratic behavior on the set. Soon, he was a a plucky has-been. But today, Plucky is bounding back. He's making plans for a comeback, and recently he was hired as the mascot for the Quad City Mallards of the United Hockey League."

Well, honestly, how can I not make a joke like that? Cartoony logos are nothing new, but it's not often I can look at the logo and identify the cartoon they ripped off. I'm amazed Warner Brothers hasn't sued.

This logo is so awful I hardly know where to begin. We'll start with the bird, since that's clearly the focal point. I count no less than half a dozen errors on the bird. First, mallards are not green. The adult males have a green head, but females and young males (and you can't convince me that's supposed to be an adult bird in that logo) do not, and none of them have green bodies. Second, mallards don't have teeth. Third, they don't have a pronounced overbite. Fourth, they don't have hands. Fifth, they can't sneer. And finally, they don't dress up like hockey players.

All this wouldn't be quite so galling if the previous logo hadn't been so much better. The stick is a little bothersome -- the blade is at a 90° angle to the shaft and the thing is probably too small to use for anything other than stirring drinks -- but the mallard actually looks like a mallard. I was actually fond of the old logo in an odd sort of way. But the new one is a catastrophe.

It's a shame, because the name is pretty good. Something about the use of "mallards" as opposed to the more general ducks makes for a good name. (The fact that it distances them from that silly Disney movie doesn't hurt.) Indeed, the only penalty the name gets is the Region, and that's more than offset by the Cool-Name bonus. The score is actually at a minus before we get to the logo. But oh god, that logo! Let's see: It gets the Cartoon, and the fact that it looks like a specific character makes it egregious. It gets the Anthropomorphization penalty, and I'm making that one egregious, too (because it has both hands and teeth). I'm tempted to hit it with the Irrelevance penalty since an all-green duck clearly isn't a mallard, but I think I'll let that one go. The duck is clearly dressed as a hockey player, with makes it automatically a quadruply-egregious Equip-Logo offense. Can I call the things behind Plucky marshpegs and make it quintuply-egregious? Oh, what the hell...I was nice on the "Irrelevance" thing so I'll be mean. And you better believe this one gets the Yucky-Logo penalty. There are mallards in Quad City, but considering the fact that their year-round range runs from the Aleutian Islands to Cape Cod to central Mexico, there's no way I'm giving them the "Local" bonus.

Final Score: 85 points.
Penalties: Region, 3 pts; Cartoon (egregious), 26 pts; Anthropomorphization (egregious), 15 pts; Name-logo, 2 pts; Equip-logo (quintuply-egregious), 38 pts; Yucky-logo, 5 pts.
Bonuses: Cool-Name, -4 pts.