Android has long used its famous mascot, bugdroid. But there’s a lesser-known, somewhat creepy earlier mascot that thankfully never saw the light of day.
A few weeks ahead of Android 14’s release, Google gave a 3D design makeover to the Android mascot. The bugdroid -– as the community calls it — got a full-body refresh and appeared in various jazzy iterations. Over the years, the Android logo has also been refined to make it easier to read. What has remained a constant is an affable, almost cute brand identity. However, the original Android mascot was anything but.
In a post (via AndroidCommunity) on Google Plus — the dead Google social media platform -– one of the core members of the Android team shared tentative sketches of the mascot. Google’s Dan Morrill referred to it as the „Dandroids.“ Presumably, the name came from combining Android with his own name, but the „D“ at the beginning could also stand for dizzying (look at those eyes), disturbing, or disconcerting.
Imagine a world where Futurama’s Bender was tasked with sketching a humanoid robot assistant, and he came up with a gruesomely colorful machine with magnetic tongs for fingers.
