Wapuu

The idea came out of a WordCamp Tokyo after party in 2009, where Matt Mullenweg asked the Japanese community how to make WordPress feel more local. Naoko Takano was brought in to develop the concept, illustrator Kazuko Kaneuchi drew the character, and her first drafts landed on 12 May 2010. It was unveiled at WordCamp Fukuoka in February 2011 with no name at all. A community poll the following August pulled 530 votes in a single week, the winner was wappy, a trademark conflict killed it, and the runner up wapuu was announced instead on 12 August 2011. Kaneuchi gave the design away as a gift to the project, and the GPL did the rest. There are now hundreds of regional variants plus enamel pins, hand sewn plushes and sticker sheets made by volunteers who never asked permission from anyone. Most companies would call that a brand safety incident. WordPress calls it the point.