‘Rancho the Rocket’ city mascot is a great idea — but it’s not a $1M idea | Opinion
.jpg "Technicians work to refurbish a former Russian rocket engine for launching satellites at the Aerojet facility in Rancho Cordova in this undated photo. Aerojet operations ceased there in 2019, with about 300 workers left in office jobs. In 2020, Lockheed Martin announced it would acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne in a $4.4 billion deal.")
The City of Rancho Cordova is floating a plan to spend 600 to 800 work hours over nearly two years at a cost of at least $1 million (and perhaps much more) developing a mascot for their city.
I have a much better, and, frankly, cheaper idea: Rent a costume, throw a high schooler in it for the summer for minimum wage and let’s see how it goes. Bada boom bada bing, you’ve got yourself a mascot.
“A rocket that’s about this big. It shows up, it could be fun,” said Councilman Garrett Gatewood, who excitedly suggested the name “Rancho the Rocket” at the council meeting on March 17.
“It flies in the air. It gets you to the moon. It makes cool noises. It launches … Listen, there’s just a lot of different rockets. It can transform,” the councilman said.
“Rancho Rocket (will) be shooting to neighborhoods near you… I am excited about this new mascot, and the new shirts I’m gonna have,” Gatewood said, adding that “Rancho” could be accompanied by an astronaut companion.
But the city is ever-so-politely slowing him down, by smothering Rancho Rocket in a months-long process to arrive at a “mascot strategy.” And that may be smart. Elected officials have many fine qualities, but marketing and branding are rarely among them. But there’s got to be a cheaper option.
Rancho the Rocket?
Rancho Cordova used to be home to Aerojet Rocketdyne, a rocket manufacturer that moved out of town in 2016, but many of its rocket-testing sites remain in the city, and the company still owns large swaths of land there — but only after years of trying to sell off the land filled with rocket fuel-polluted groundwater.
The staff report presented to the city council last month requested more than two years to get the project ready: A month to “determine strategy goals and objectives,” three months to create a request for proposals, a month to create a contract, two months for “group concepting” and planning, another four months to conduct research and development, four months to “finalize the mascot” and then — finally — another four months to create a launch event.
That means we might have to wait until 2027 to see Rancho the Rocket make its debut.
So, free of charge to the city, I called a few costume shops around town.
Broadway Costumes in South Sacramento said they didn’t have a rocket costume, but they did have an astronaut for just $55 per day. And Evangeline’s Costume Mansion in Old Sac also said there were no rockets in stock — but you could buy an astronaut costume for $30-$60 “depending on quality.” And while an astronaut could be a great buddy character, I think Rancho the Rocket really should be… well, a rocket.
A quick Google search for an adult rocket costume led me to acemascot.com, where a very cute rocket costume is on sale for just $268 — a cool 4,000% in potential savings for the city, and it’s so darn cute that no one will ask too many questions about the connection to Lockheed Martin.
You’re welcome, Rancho Cordova!
Notes from South Korea
Rancho Cordova’s city council got the idea from a taxpayer-funded “region-wide economic development visit” to South Korea last year. Of course, the city could spend all this money and time and still be left with a failure to launch. Spending $1-$1.5 million isn’t a guarantee of success.
And that’s partly because Rancho Cordova is not Seoul (in case you hadn’t noticed). Perhaps most importantly, Rancho’s got a budget of about $100 million per year, so it really shouldn’t be thinking like a city with a $35 billion budget. The Seoul Metropolitan Government invested 5.5 billion won (approximately $4.7 million in U.S. Dollars) into the creation of its mascot, Hechi, “known as the protector of justice and safety, and the bringer of dreams, hope and happiness.”
But that’s a mighty big reach for Rancho the Rocket, who might instead be known as the protector of the environment and of groundwater, fighting an evil antagonist made of toxic runoff — considering Aerojet’s local legacy.
“To be honest with you, this was a very broad-based initial conversation that we brought back to the council at their request; nothing has been decided,” Maria Kniestedt, communications director for the city of Rancho Cordova, told me. “We are considering lots of different options. But I will tell you, just as a PR and comms person, you never want to just have a mascot out there without a program. You don’t want to be spending the public’s money if you don’t have a plan to move forward.”
And I get that. It’s ultimately the council’s decision, and they’re keen to emphasize that no money’s been spent yet, unless you count the handful of working hours it took to get a PowerPoint presentation together.
A cheaper option
I understand that the city council may want to give this mascot idea every chance to succeed, but the reality remains that on the day of launch — I swear, the puns keep making themselves — people are either going to love it or hate it.
Why not start with something easier to ditch if the stars don’t align?
Buy a cheap rocket mascot costume. Put it out at as many city events this summer as possible. Send it to farmer’s markets and summer camps and pool parties. Have it pass out flyers about upcoming city events and pose for pictures. Ask people at the end of the summer what they thought. If local kids and their parents love it, they’ve got a good chance at a hit.
The rest will follow, and then the city can start discussing design development, planning committees and marketing campaigns. But Rancho Cordova City Council doesn’t need to be talking about two years and a million dollars yet.
It’s not like it’s rocket science.
