Gritty, the Flyers’ new mascot, debuts, gets mocked on social media

The Flyers unveiled a new mascot Monday morning and the internet responded with a collective: "What the puck?"

"Gritty" was debuted to young fans at an unveiling ceremony at the Please Touch Museum, where we imagine the children were immediately told not to touch him.

It's hard to rank the things that terrify us about Gritty, but the fact that he appears to have no control over his extremely active eyeballs is chief among them.

Many people expressed concern that he might have a drug problem.

As far as we can tell, the Flyers haven't identified what Gritty is, exactly, aside from stating that his "His father was a 'bully' " and he was forced out of his secret hideout by recent construction at the Wells Fargo Center.

But the internet has a few ideas of what Gritty could be, including a close relation to Animal from The Muppets with some features of Grimace and the Hamburglar from McDonald's thrown in for good measure.

Fans also likened Gritty to ZZ Top, Gossamer from Looney Tunes, and every Flyers player who's ever had a ginger beard.

But perhaps, just perhaps, Gritty is more of a feeling than a thing.

While the Flyers said Gritty came from under the Wells Fargo Center and "he's been around for a lot longer than we know it," we believe we know exactly where the mascot came from.

Delco.

I mean, look at the guy. He obviously hates shaving, loves Natty Ice, and has "his stool" at the bar of every Barnaby's in the county. Plus, he knows more about hockey than you do. He's so Delco.

What wasn't Delco was Gritty's bizarre choice to use house music in his intro video. Nothing says "I know nothing about Philly sports" than using house music to try to pump up a local crowd.

Don't worry — this guy, who totally looks like he's from Delco has fixed Gritty's soundtrack.

Perhaps the hardest Gritty burn came from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Laugh now, Penguins, but we've got to say if we were a bird, we'd be pretty scared of Gritty. He looks like he eats birds for breakfast — feathers and all.

Gritty is the second sports mascot debut in Philly this month. Two weeks ago, the Philadelphia Union unveiled its mascot, Phang, a blue snake with arms and legs.

While the verdict is still out on Gritty, in his few short hours of existence he's already inspired plenty of memes and a Change.org petition calling for his ouster.

Whether he'll inspire Stanley Cup wins is another question.

Listen, we're willing to give Gritty a chance. It could have always been worse.

Orange you glad he wasn't a banana?