I'm typing this as I just finished the 2026 Series of Rogue Mascots. This started as a crazy idea last year while travelling through Southeast Asia and seeing the penguin mascot from the Japanese Dondondonki supermarkets. I had previously been to Japan 9 years ago and it brought me good memories. The Mixue snowman came also from Thailand as I couldn't stop having cheap ice cream under such massive heat.
As I flew back home to NYC, I had a thought of making an exclusive series of forgotten / obscure mascots from different brands across the world. Purposely, I didn't want to pick the very famous cereal box mascots or other very known ones - although I guess the Duracell rabbit is quite famous but still... I wanted to go for mascots that most people wouldn't know so they would go look them up and research their stories.
I do have to admit, as months went by, it was really hard to pick new mascots, given I didn't want to repeat patterns (i.e for some reason there are tons of fully white colored mascots) and I wanted to make sure they were not famous mascots whatsoever. That's the main reason I decided to cut this short at 9 pieces instead of 16 or 36 as I did previous years.
I have really enjoyed making these series and hopefully I come up with new ideas in the near future. For now, I'll go back to regular weird monster artworks, the kind you're all used to (or not). I hope you liked this year's series and enjoy the summer. See you soon-
