Wahuuuuh?

Another year, another mascot. Wahoooooooo, the oft-delayed waterpark in the City Centre mall, has done the one and only thing that Bahraini PR firms seem to be able to do these days: invented a mascot.

According to various media outlets, the "coolest turtle in town will be called Squirtle".

Now, Squirtle is an infinitely superior moniker to the BIC's Speedy. But... and this here is a nice, chunky, supersized but... It's the name of a Pokemon.

Yup. Bahrain's latest home-grown creation, named after a publicity spree and a competition in English and Arabic, with the help of 25 schools and over 500 participants, also just happens to be the name of a popular character from a thoroughly incomprehensible Japanese franchise.

They went with Squirtle because, according to Gulf Weekly, 'it rhymes with turtle and has a squirting water association'. And here's the best bit... three different participants, all aged 11, all from St. Chris, submitted the same name.

Mitchell Sandy, 11, from Jannusan, was the first to suggest the name and won a Wahooo! family pass to enjoy all the facilities once the waterpark is open and a goodie bag. Scarlet Robinson, 11, from Riffa, and Rebecca Dench, 11, from Janabiyah, also came up with Squirtle and won a family pass and tickets for the waterpark respectively.

The youngsters attend St Christopher's School and had no idea they all had individually come up with the same brainwave until they met at the awards ceremony on Saturday!

Bravo. It was a 'brainwave'. Or perhaps it could have had something to with the fact that the target demographic for Pokemon is children under the age of 12.

That nobody questioned the name is rather bewildering. For three separate individuals to submit the same name - a name that the management and PR peeps of Wahoooo! believe to be an original creation from the exceptionally gifted minds of 11 year old students - is somewhat suspect. Especially if they all spelt the name the same way, which I assume they did. Surely someone somewhere in the process would have gone to the extent of consulting the Google oracle, y'know, just to be sure. Nope.

Yes, this is rather mundane. Trivial in fact. And yes, I admit, I knew that there was a Pokemon character called Squirtle, thanks to a brief attempt at deciphering the children's craze of yester-decade - a task at which I failed miserably.

Pokemon is a registered trademark of Nintendo. I would assume that the trademark and copyright extends to the characters and their likenesses. And yes, there are likenesses. Squirtle the Pokemon thing is a Turtle-type creature thing that squirts water. And Squirtle the Wahoooooooo mascot is a Turtle that squirts water. The only real difference is that Squirtle, the Nintendo character, might possibly be part squirrel or something.

But seriously... Nobody in the entire process looked it up? Nobody thought that the imagination of children could be skewed by some lawsuit-crazed behemoth of intellectual property? It would seem not. More worryingly, none of the parents thought to bring it up. Perhaps because no parents can understand what the hell Pokemon is, but that's not really an excuse. If you don't know what it is your children are watching, playing or whatever, you probably shouldn't be letting them do it.

I'm hoping... no, I'm praying that we get ourselves a nice, big, international-headline grabbing lawsuit. It wont come to that. I might, y'know, email the legal department of Nintendo just for giggles. And if something this blatantly actionable doesn't get a PR monkey fired, nothing will.

Google 'Squirtle'. Google 'Squirtle Bahrain'. It's all Pokemon. Do you think the Ministry muppets who occasionally harass Bahrain's good ol' fashioned bootleg DVD stores will hanging around City Centre shouting and poking and whining as only the Ministry can do?