Reflecting a current trend in design (or so Jenne assures me), the efforts of the creative team at Meomi (pronounced Me-Oh-My, I suspect) have been chosen as the official mascots of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. A different direction than that mascots from the last Olympic Games in Turin, though very reminiscent of the Cheburashka character used by the Russians as team mascot during the Turin games.
Of course Cheburashka dates from a 1950's children's book, so it goes to show that what goes around comes around in design trends, and that we can't blame the Happy Tree Friends for everything.