Beijing ’08 Olympic Mascots

As any hard-core Olympic geek will tell you, the games are only as good as their cuddly little mascots…and this year’s batch is top-of-the-line, baby! Nicknamed the “Friendlies” or “Fuwa”, these Chinese “good luck dolls” outpace even the classic Nagano “Snowlets” from 1998 in the cute department.

Colored the bright hues of the Olympic rings, the “Friendlies” are Beibei (the blue fish), Jinjing (the black panda), Huanhuan (the red Olympic flame), Nini (the green swallow) and Yingying (the yellow antelope).

And though I jumbled up their names, when you put them in the proper order, it says “Beijing Welcomes You!” in Chinese. Or something like that…

Either way, as you can see, these guys are almost too cute for words. And though we only bought one of the plush “Friendlies” at the Chinese Pavillion at Epcot this past April — we have had Huanhuan, the red one, sitting on top of our TV since the games began! — I recently discovered a cool site where you can download desktop wallpapers of each and every one of the Chinese “Friendlies”.

And while you might not be crazy enough to place a stuffed one on your TV — or to have purchased a slew of “Friendlies” shot glasses, a softball and a crazy expensive “Friendlies” coffee cup at Epcot — you still might wanna have these guys on your computer screen for fun.

So, download away at the appropriately named: OlympicFunPage and, as those bad-ass, bronze-medal-winning Mexican diving chicas would say: “Que viva los “Friendlies”!