Sqrats Go Commercial Too Soon

by El Snatcher

1999-07-07 03:55:22

Animal Rampage

Just like it happened with the "chupacabra" (AKA: goat sucker), a designer/artist type is hawking a bunch of t-shirts and other items emblazoned with renditions of a cryptozoological enigma. This time it's the sqrat -- a creature purported to be half squirrel and half rat, having the temperament of a vicious attack dog.

On her new web site, www.scrat.com, The fashion designer, "Ivy Supersonic" -- known in New York City for parading naked people around in feathered hats -- claims to have trademarked the name "sqrat." But how can you trademark a new species of animal? She hawks sqrat hats and t-shirts. To promote it all, a few of her associates crashed the stage of a recent rock concert put on by New York City radio station K-ROCK, and pranced around with banners displaying the site's URL.

Even though it's nice to see the mystery of sqrats getting more attention, all in all, Ivy's sqrat site is pretty half-assed. It's just too early for weird fashion designers to cash in on this phenomenon, especially without devoting more energy to covering reports of sightings, or doing any cryptozoology at all.

Furthermore, the sqrat logo looks more like a beaver than a sqrat (back to the drawing board, please).

To her credit, she does have a couple of short articles about sqrats including, "Does the Sqrat(tm) Really Exist? Mutant Strain Combination Could be Loose in New York City," but what she should do is provide a forum for researchers and interested parties to communicate about sqrats, and inform the web-surfing public with as much data about the enigmatic creatures as possible. That's the kind of sqrat site the world needs. Nobody would mind if she sold a few hats and t-shirts along the way; and I'm sure she would sell tons of them, and maybe some of her feathered hats too. But this business of trademarking the word "sqrat" is simply naked greed.

Check it out yourself

xandria@pigdog.org