Airport News Japan

The First Airport Mascot Character? “Snokku-kun” Going Strong this Winter at Memanbetsu Airport, Hokkaido

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“Snokku-kun,” the airport mascot for Memanbetsu Airport in Hokkaido.

“Snokku-kun,” the airport mascot for Memanbetsu Airport in Ozora, Abashiri District, Hokkaido, is going strong again this winter, which is a bitterly cold one.

Memanbetsu Airport’s Snokku-kun is supposed to be the oldest airport mascot. A spokesperson from the airport’s management office said he was created as part of the 1998 “Sora no Hi” (“Sky Day”) project after the “Sora no Hi, Sora no Junkan” (“Sky Day and Sky Week”) Executive Committee collected characters submitted by local residents. The design chosen on September 20, Sky Day, from among those submitted was a work by a third-year junior high school student in Memanbetsu.

The final character design was revealed on January 28, 1999 and named Snokku-kun later that year on March 29. Ideas for names were invited through various media, and the combination of “snow” and “Okhotsk” (which became “Snokku” in the Japanese syllabary) from among roughly 400 people was adopted.

As when the character was first adopted, the management office says that Snokku-kun is still not largely recognized as “the first mascot character of a Japanese airport,” although there is no mistake that Snokku-kun, a snowman taking off from the runway on a jumbo jet, is “THE airport mascot character of Japan’s extreme north.”

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