Organizers of the 2012 London Summer Olympics have decided upon one-eyed mascots for their Games, and no, they’re not pirates.

They are Wenlock and Mandeville, names for two small English towns, and they have no discernible gender. (See an animated video about their fictional origin here.)

Says London organizing chief Sebastian Coe of the move away from mascots that easily make for stuffed-animal marketing: “We’ve talked to lots of children and they don’t want cuddly toys. They want something they can interact with and something with a good story behind it.”

Well, we suppose explaining to a child why someone has only one eye and is neither male nor female would indeed make for a good story.