Crunchman Returns

The Syracuse Crunch will open the 2012-2013 season—on frozen recycled rainwater, no less—Oct. 13 with a familiar figure plastered on its players’ chests: Crunchman. The predecessor and replacement for Al the Ice Gorilla was introduced July 2 in front of 250 fans and members of the media on the arena floor of the Onondaga County War Memorial. 

“It’s time to go back to the future,” said team owner Howard Dolgon as the club’s new logo was unveiled to the public. And fans got a retrospective eyeful of the hockey team’s new look, courtesy of team spokesmodel Carol Grow. Crunchman 2.0 certainly reflects a paradoxically futuristic present. The visor-ed and caped heroic figure is depicted punching an unusually large blue hand into the foreground, just above the crunched blue block word “CRUNCH.” White lightning accessorizes whenever it is—the 1990s?—from whence he came.

The change in team designs coincides with a shift in National Hockey League affiliation. An American Hockey League (AHL) feeder of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks since 2010, the Crunch struck a deal earlier this year with the Tampa Bay Lightning, previously affiliated with the Norfolk Admirals, which in June won the Calder Cup as champions of the AHL. Fittingly, the Calder Cup was first awarded in 1937, to the Syracuse Stars.

The logo and mascot arrangement is a throwback, replacing Al the Ice Gorilla, the creature who replaced the original Crunchman, who entertained Crunch fans from 1994 to 2000. Al, whose retirement plans are still in the works, is famously the world’s only known Ice Gorilla (and for that, we’ve been thankful all these years). And though it remains unknown how many Crunchmen and Crunchwomen there are in this world, the man responsible for reviving the American Hockey League team’s original mascot sat down with the Syracuse New Times to discuss his creation.

Steve Luczka, who has called the Crunch a client for 15 years, designs the team’s marketing and promotional materials. He discussed Crunchman’s origins, how and why he evolved as well, why he looks the way he does and what fans can expect next from the 315 area code’s pro hockey franchise.

A: Well, actually, the concept came from Howard. Crunch management approached me about six months ago with the idea that they were going to be making a switch. And he had something in mind and was looking into, as you’ve seen in the news that’s out there, bringing Crunchman back. Jim Sarosy here at the Crunch approached me with the initial concept that Howard had. They wanted to have Crunchman brought back kind of with a modern-day look and feel to him. So knowing what was under wraps through all this time with the new affiliation with Tampa and everything, I wanted to add the subtle lightning bolt treatment to it that paid homage to the new parent team. So I took Crunchman, kind of modernized him with a more stylized, streamlined helmet with a lot more motion to him, having him breaking through the ice and just keep kind of flowing. And the stick is curved to convey motion and energy that the product on the ice will bring.

Q: But you don’t actually work for the club, right?

A: For the past 15 years I’ve been doing the game programs and pocket schedules and scoreboard graphics and stuff like that. I’m used to doing a lot of work, subtle stuff with them. This is the first time I’ve taken on a large graphic of such significance for the team.

Q: You didn’t do any of the old Ice Gorilla and Crunchman renditions then?

A: No, none of those. There could be a secondary logo coming out that I have designed. They’re looking for a secondary mark that they might use for a special jersey. It has a little bit more uniqueness to it. It won’t have Crunchman if that’s the case. That remains to be seen if that’s to come to fruition or not.

Q: Is it more city-driven than character-based?

A: Well, put it this way: I did about 26 different designs for them to consider {laughs} and right now they range from, yeah, something that has a little local flavor, to some things that are pretty heavy with our Tampa Bay affiliation with lightning bolts, to just foregoing any type of mascot whatsoever and just focusing on the word “crunch” in a different stylized treatment.

Q: What’s the difference between the new Crunchman and the older logos?

A: What I like is the subtle things. One of them is that no previous logo aside from the colors in the logo paid any homage or any nod to the parent team. In this case it’s just a lightning bolt, it’s subtle. I like that nod to it and I like the motion that this logo conveys that the other ones didn’t. They were more static. The original Crunchman was kind of just there, didn’t have much motion to him. This one’s kind of blasting forth in the foreground and the cape’s blowing and with the stick there, it kind of bring a little excitement, a little bit of emotion that transcends to the team’s performance on the ice.

Q: It’s something for the kids, too, isn’t it? A little comic-book feel?

A: Yeah, it’s got a good comic-book feel. I know when the first Al came out, boy they had problems! The first mascot they had scared the crap out of the kids. It looked more like something from a horror house or something. It was a more evil-looking Al. They made him a little bit more friendly for the kids after the first year, but you know, Al has his fans and Crunchman has his fans. I think the loyal, true fans that have been there from the beginning can appreciate this logo and I think the kids can relate to it also with the comic-book feel to it, especially with some of the movies that are going on right now like The Avengers. It’s kind of cool.

Q: How’s Al’s displacement being handled?

A: Al will still make appearances, not design-related.

Q: I see that Reebok is involved somehow. Did they have a role in the design?

A: Reebok has the contract to make all the uniforms for the whole league. They supply all the equipment and everything for the whole league. So they actually took the first concept that Howard had come up with and tried to render something from what Howard came up with. They tried to come up with a Crunchman look and it really didn’t work well, so they scrapped that design and came to me and I retooled the whole thing. I gave it back; I think it went through about 10 different iterations between the Crunch and myself. So the final one went to Reebok and then they had to do the separations for the actual logo, so what they did is they kind of converted my design, which was more or less a sketch, and brought the added colors I specified to it. And made a couple subtle changes to it. They changed the ‘S’ on the front of the chest and I actually had a little bit more muscles in the guy in the first concept I presented. He was more chiseled, I’ll put it that way, but he still looks good. {Laughs}.”

—Jacob Klinger