Most mascots begin with a brief: a document setting out who the character is, what they stand for, which adjectives apply.

But when marketing teams start running low on ideas, some odd characters can result — with Long Penguin the most notorious.

Long Penguin never got a brief.

What he got instead was ten years of moments nobody planned, and a team who found him funny enough to keep going.

Here is the whole thing, head to feet.

2016 – Starting with a doodle A team was stuck when trying to come up with an idea to mark the Mid-Autumn Festival, an annual holiday in China that brings families together.

In middle of a meeting, someone drew Tencent’s penguin mascot with a ridiculously long bird — the kind of thing you draw when you’ve run out of good ideas and start entertaining bad ones.

In Chinese, the team jokingly called it 长鹅 (cháng é, literally “long penguin”).

When said aloud in Chinese, it sounds like the moon goddess at the heart of the Mid-Autumn legend.

No one knew that would become the beginning of Chang’e’s long history.

2017-2019 – Developing a cult following For four years he lived in group chats.

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