There was a thing in the turn of the millenia where Finnish teams did this as well. Well, the club names didn't change, but they rebranded to these "gimmicks". They have since reverted back. On the left, the logos that were introduced in the 90s-early 2000s and carried over to the 2010s. On the right, the original logos which they reverted back to:
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The first one is especially stupid. Rauman Lukko, "Lock (of) Rauma" is a pretty decent team name to begin with, and they had this awesome logo. They then went to the fox from 1996-2012, because what
@expatriatedtexan and
@UnkleKraker said I guess. "The kids will like it". Well f*** them kids.
With HPK (2nd) and HIFK (3rd) respectively, we are talking about sports clubs where the names are acronyms anyways so it might have made some sense to find themselves a mascot in this 90s craze. HPK sported the knight 2001-2012, and HIFK "the beast" or whatever 2000-2010
Thank god we have got away from that, and thank god my team never got into this type of shit.