Lake Elsinore Storm

78

I don't know why this team is fascinated with red eyes.

It all started back in 1994, when Lake Elsinore first got a minor league team. The team named itself the Lake Elsinore Storm, which makes sense because it never rains in Lake Elsinore. Seriously, even the team's own director of media relations once commented that "we don't get a lot of weather other than sun and heat." This probably explains why the first logo looked like it did: nobody in Lake Elsinore has any idea what a storm cloud looks like, so they had to guess. Speaking as someone who lives in a place that does get actual storm clouds, I feel qualified in pointing out one mistake: storm clouds don't have eyes. And even if they did, those eyes wouldn't have red pupils. Storm clouds bring rain, so obviously the pupils would be blue. I mean, come on, guys, that's just basic science.

Then in 2001 the team realized that a storm cloud with red glowing eyes was a ridiculous logo for a team called the Storm, and they solved it by getting rid of the parts that made any sense. Seriously, the cloud didn't look too bad aside from the eyes, and if they had gotten rid of the eyes the logo would have been decent, if unremarkable. Instead, the team decided to prioritize remarkable over good, and got rid of the cloud (and lightning) while keeping the eyes. The eyes were now disembodied and staring straight at the viewer. The word Storm was now written in a bizarre typeface reminiscent of those stereotypically "Chinese" fonts you sometimes see the names of some Chinese restaurants written in.

Then a few years ago the Storm decided it was time for a change. The "Chinese" font clearly had to go, and it could take the eyes with it except that no of course it couldn't. The eyes remain, mostly unchanged. Instead the name of the team is written in a different style. It's better, but the logo still makes no damn sense.

Or maybe it does. Apparently the team has been selling merchandise with just the eyes on them for years, and it's quite popular. Even people who couldn't care less about the team like the logo. It's supposedly really popular with fans of "extreme sports" in the area. I just checked out the team's online store, and among the items they sell with just the eyes are caps (in roughly three dozen different styles), T-shirts (about a dozen different styles), baseballs, golf balls, cell phone cases, can koozies, towels, travel mugs, refrigerator magnets, keychains, ear rings, decals, bumper stickers, pins, pens, plush bats, and mini-bats. Interestingly, you can't get a hoodie with just the eyes, although they do sell several styles of hoodies with the full logo. Maybe hoodies just aren't "extreme sports" enough to warrant the eyes-only treatment? Although if that's the case, what's up with the golf balls?

In any case, apparently the logo is a marketing gold mine. I suppose I can't blame them for wanting to keep mining that vein, and making a change to the wordmark portion of the logo to goose sales a little bit. Still, there's no getting around the fact that the appeal of the logo ultimately comes from the fact that it's so easily detachable from the team name, and from the very idea that it's supposed to be a logo for a baseball team.

I'd say there's a lesson here, which is that if you abandon your integrity to make a cash grab it can be really lucrative. But we all already knew that, right? We didn't need another example. Well, like it or not, here it is.

Final Score: 78 points.
Penalties: Singular, 15 pts; Letter, 24 pts; Irrelevance, 39 pts.
Bonuses: None.