If you’ve been to many WordCamps in the past you may have noticed an interesting little character has made its way into WordCamps around the globe and at the same time secured a special place in many of our hearts. Wapuu is the WordCamp mascot craze circling the globe and we at WordCamp US couldn’t miss the chance to create our very own. But before the unveiling we thought you should know a little more about Wapuu and where it comes from.

Wapuu History

From The Wapuu Fan Club Site

It all started when Matt Mullenweg (the co-founder of WordPress) went to Japan in 2009. While there the Japanese WordPress community asked him if they could create a mascot. Matt said yes as long as it was GPL licensed and designed by an illustrator who understands the open source community. The community asked Kazuko Kaneuchi, who had experience in creating the Japanese NetBeans mascot, Neko-bean.

Once the design was done a vote was held to decide the name. 67 different names were
proposed and the voting began on August 2, 2011. Over 530 votes were cast and “wappy” was the winner. However, it was discovered that there was already a Japanese company using the name wappy so the second place name was chosen, wapuu (わぷー). wapuu was officially unveiled at WordCamp Fukuoka 2011. The WordPress world has never been the same.

Introducing Benpuu

Benpuu is a new iteration of one of the WordCamp Philly Wapuus. He comes dressed in his finest duds with his very favorite book and he’s available exclusively at WordCamp US.

Thanks to StickerGiant we even have a sneak peek of the Benpuu stickers in production!

Want a Benpuu sticker of your very own? Tickets are still available, grab yours now.