The original Phillie Phanatic, David Raymond, had a dream of a hall of fame that would honor mascots the same way athletes in basketball, baseball, football, hockey and other sports get enshrined in immortality. The Mascot Hall of Fame he envisioned started out as an online hall of fame that enshrined new inductees every year at a ceremony in Pennsylvania. It celebrated legendary mascots like the Suns' Gorilla, the Famous Chicken, Bucky Badger, the Jazz Bear, Brutus Buckeye and KC Wolf.
His vision became a reality when the $18 million, 25,000-square-foot Mascot Hall of Fame and Interactive Children's Museum opened on the site of a former lumber yard in downtown Whiting, Indiana, near the Lake Michigan beach in late 2018. The three-story shrine to the fuzzy, furry mascots who have long delighted fans of both professional and collegiate sports made an immediate impression, juxtaposing a modern glass-and-steel building with the giant googly-eyed face of its Reggie mascot with a giant booger hanging from his nose and his hand holding up a television screen displaying upcoming events like mascot appearances. The colorful monument to the goofy side of sports attracted significant media attention, including from ESPN, WBEZ, WGN, WTHR, the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis Monthly, the South Bend Tribune and many other outlets.
The Mascot Hall of Fame will be closed if a development deal goes through. It's costing the City of Whiting, Ind., $500,000 a year and never met projections.