Most football clubs have mascots that they use to appeal to younger people, aiming to turn them into club supporters in the long term. In the case of West Bromwich Albion, however, the club has actually had more than one over the years.
That is thanks to the fact that the club took on a two-year sponsorship deal with a British boiler company, meaning that Boiler Man was introduced. He is a decent foil for the club’s official mascot, Baggie Bird, who is based on the throstle bird that features on the club’s crest. Both offer something different, with one being financial and the other emotional.
Baggie Bird
The vast majority of people who know about the world of football are aware of the fact that West Bromwich Albion’s nickname is the Baggies. What not a lot of people will know about, however, is the reason why that’s the case. It might seem innocuous, but it is a key factor in understanding the club’s mascot, Baggie Bird.
The club’s nickname is significantly more interesting than the likes of Birmingham City, who are known as the Blues, even if people don’t really know where it comes from. That is because there isn’t even one clear story of where it comes from.
The Throstles
The club itself was founded in 1878, being known in the early days as ‘the Throstles’, thanks to the presence of the bird of the same name being present on the club’s badge. It wasn’t until the early part of the 1900s that the term ‘the Baggies’ was heard for the first time at the Hawthorns. The official historian of West Brom Albion, Tony Matthews, said:
Most people imagine WBA are nicknamed the Baggies because of the Baggie shorts they wore in their period of glory around the turn of the century, but baggy shorts were worn for many years before fans started calling their team by this nickname.
Known as ‘the Albion’ when it formed, for obvious reasons, the side played in numerous different grounds before finally settling down at the Hawthorns. That was on account of the fact that the Black Country word for the bird the song thrush was was a ‘throstle’, with numerous members of the bird family seen in the hawthorn bushes that were seen in the bushes in the area of the football ground.
“Here Comes the Bagmen!”
There were two entrances to the ground in those days, one at either end of the pitch, which would see the gatekeepers take in the money from supporters before taking them to the centre line. They took that money, mostly in pennies, in large cloth bags, which resulted in people in the crowd declaring, “Here comes the bagmen!”.
Over time, this turned to becoming a chant of ‘Here come the Baggies!’, which lent the club its unofficial nickname in the years that followed. There is also a suggestion that the nickname might have come from Aston Villa supporters, who joked at the expense of West Brom supporters about the fact that they worked in factories and wore baggy clothing for their work. Regardless of its exact origin, it is why the main mascot is known as Baggie Bird.
It also helps to explain why it is that the mascot’s form is that of a bird. Those song thrush birds found in the area around the Hawthorns became the inspiration for the mascot, which involves a grown adult dressing up and interacting with the crowd ahead of kick-off at a home match. There was also another bird mascot, known as ‘Albi’, but that didn’t last long. The football club initially rejected its nickname of the Baggies, looking down on it, but later embraced it and obviously moved to use it as the name for the official mascot.
Boiler Man
🤣 Apparently West Brom’s new mascot is a boiler
The Bolton fans’ reaction was more than fair…
(📹 @MikeyGregory)#WBA#BWFC pic.twitter.com/iNsyQ9iBEq
— The Sportsman (@TheSportsman) August 4, 2018
If you put down a list of superhero names, it is likely that ‘Boiler Man’ would only really appeal to pensioners once the weather starts to turn. Regardless, the club followed up its relegation out of the Premier League by signing a sponsorship deal with a British boiler company, part of which involved the introduction of a new mascot on a match day. If supporters were already feeling a degree of sadness thanks to the fact that they were already no longer playing in the top-flight, that would likely have seen salt rubbed into the wound with the arrival of Boiler Man as a mascot.
An Outlandish Marketing Campaign
The club was gearing up for its first season back in the Championship with a game against Bolton Wanderers in the August of 2018 when Boiler Man was introduced before kick-off. The anthropomorphic combi-boiler costume was roundly mocked by the tens of thousands of people inside the Hawthorns for the match, with supporters on both sides being quick to take the mickey. As is so often the case with football, though, it didn’t take long before West Brom fans began to take a shine to their new mascot, even if he was only there for entirely capitalist reasons.
Introduced when Ideal Boilers began sponsoring the Baggies, Boiler Man was an outlandish marketing campaign in the first few weeks before slowly becoming a staple of a trip to the Hawthorns. That was, in part, thanks to the sharing of videos and pictures of the new mascot on social media, whilst supporters realised that the pair make something of an endearing couple on match days. The visual of the two mascots together helps to encapsulate the mix of the modern and the classic that is football in the 21st century, where money-making will always win out.