Goofy Suit

Joey: "Well I would invite my mom but she's goofy." Jesse: "Joey, that's a horrible thing to say about your mother." Joey (paraphrased): "No she's really Goofy, she works at Disneyland. —Full House

According to television, the crappier your job is, the crappier the uniform is. So appropriately enough, the worst job in the world is to wear a cartoon-character suit, either at an amusement park, a children's birthday party, as a sports mascot, or wherever else you may end up doing this. Not only is it humiliating in and of itself, but children will regard you as a fair target for punches, buckets of paint, flying anvils, etc. Sometimes adults decide the same, and they bring out the heavy artillery (sometimes literally).

Employers never, ever mind if their mascot gets assaulted, presumably because beating up the guy in the Goofy Suit is one of the big draws that brings in the customers.

Getting sweaty and miserable under the suit is just extra trouble.

A subtrope of Bad Job, Worse Uniform. Compare Burger Fool, Suck E. Cheese's, You Are a Tree Charlie Brown.

Examples:

Advertising

• A few years ago there was a commercial for Snickers which featured a Deadpan Snarker dressed as dog mascot named Barkey. People asked him when the show started even though the sign was right next to him and he of course responds with sarcasm. When a kid asks if he's really Barkey he says "Barkey's a cartoon. I'm a grown man who's made a lot of mistakes."

Anime

• Dai-Guard: In the first episode, Daiguard's main pilot is forced to wear a bird suit and hand out balloons to kids to promote his company. When some snide kids insult the robot, he takes silly vengeance.
• Scrapped Princess: Pacifica dons a Mr. Soopy costume to help promote a bakery; she isn't very good at the job. Trainee knight Leo, however, really takes to wearing the outfit, and brings it with him when he leaves.
• K-On!: To promote the light music club, club adviser (and Cosplay Otaku Girl) Sawako Yamanaka has the members dress up in animal mascot costumes and hand out leaflets. This ends up being astoundingly counter-productive: the costumes freak out the rest of the student population, and no-one can figure out what animal costumes have to do with anything the club does.

Comics

• A story arc in Peanuts had Charlie Brown getting hustled into being the Pelican mascot for Peppermint Patty's ball team. She won't even let him take the costume off between games, because that would mess with his ability to "think pelican...be pelican!" Marcie begs him to take it off "if not for your sake, then for someone who likes you." (Sally: "Kiss her, you blockhead!")Charlie Brown, of course, ends up wearing the costume until a wild ball beans him.
• Mad Magazine once suggested that a way to improve attendance at football games would be to add a new rule: each team would score extra points if the opposing team's mascot is tied up and held hostage by fans for a sufficiently long period.
• In Empowered, the titular heroine's original day job is wearing an elephant suit with a backwards baseball cap to advertise a department store, Value Mammoth. People make fun of her all day long, but she still finds it mildly preferable to wearing her too-revealing super-suit.
• In one issue of the Robin comic book, Robin's friend Ives is working as the mascot at a Suck E. Cheese's. He comes to school so bruised that Robin suspects he is being abused.

Film

• Chazz Michael Michaels's occupation is this in an ice-skating show after the opening montage of Blades of Glory.
• Death to Smoochy.

Literature

• In Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (by Dave Barry, natch), it says that Disney Land puts people in the Goofy suit as punishment for breaking the rules — like trying to leave Disney Land (which is strictly forbidden).
• British writer Tim Lott wrote a short story about an actor who has to do this once. He finds that no-one takes him seriously, even when his wife is in urgent need of medical help.
• Comedian Dave O'Neil's biography is titled It's Hot Inside the Bear Suit after his time playing Humphrey B. Bear on the Australian kids show Here's Humphey. The actors playing Humphrey are never credited.
• The Diogenes Club story "The Gypsies in the Wood" features a Victorian children's book entrepreneur who has invented Souvenir Land fifty years early. Diogenes agent Charles Beauregard has to go undercover as a teddy bear called Sir Boris de Bruin.

Live Action TV

• 21 Jump Street, "School's Out." Officer Judy Hoffs is told that the police department needs someone for an "important PR position." Said position turns out to be giving safety tips to grade-school children as "Officer Milk Carton," in a stupid milk carton costume that doesn't even have arms.
• The Adventures of Pete and Pete, "Rangeboy." Big Pete doesn't want to be recognized at his summer job driving a golf cart, so he wears a bear costume and becomes the (non-speaking)golf bear. Unfortunately, he gets beaned several times — and then the golfers begin aiming at him. Before long, regular golf has ceased, and the sole sport is getting the bear with flying golf balls.
• In the Israeli TV series Arab Labor, newspaper reporter Amjad finally gets his big break in TV...as a children's TV host in a pink bunny suit. Later, due to a crisis, he winds up running out of the studio mid-filming...and winds up in the middle of a gay pride parade. His extremely conservative, traditionalist father sees his son on TV, in a pink bunny suit at a gay pride parade, and faints.
• Belker in Hill Street Blues worked undercover wearing a chicken suit in two episodes. He even made an arrest wearing it.
• In Degrassi the Next Generation, Paige (the Alpha Bitch)and Manny (The Starscream) are fighting for control of the cheerleading squad. Paige steals credit for Manny's work, kicks her off the squad, and makes her be the mascot. In retaliation, Manny's allies on the squad deliberately drop Paige during a game, breaking her leg — and we cut to the panther mascot doing a very triumphant dance.
• Happens in an episode of Roseanne when David works as one of these. The workers were being brainwashed into acting how the park thought they should act at all times.
• An episode of Full House, as shown in the quote above.
• Cheers: Carla's husband is a pro hockey player, but he gets cut from the Bruins. He calls her to let her know he got a job as a Penguin. She thinks he means with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but no - he's in a penguin suit for the Ice Capades.
• LA Law: Dan Castellaneta plays a man in a Homer Simpson suit who got fired because he removed the head while in public view - he was sick.
• In Blue Mountain State, Sammy manages to get a job as the team's mascot early in the series, which actually improves his social standing, but only because he was already the Butt Monkey.
• Garo: Perpetual career-switcher Kaoru has a stint working in an amusement park as a giant bunny, where (naturally) she is beaten up by a bunch of little kids. Later it turns out that her manager has a bit of a fetish for dressing up cute girls in costumes.
• Occasionally seen in The Apprentice as a ploy to boost sales.

Video Games

• Where was Yuna during the opening sequence of Final Fantasy X 2? Outside the concert hall stuck in a moogle costume, of all things.
• Rollercoaster Tycoon allows you to hire such people.

Western Animation

• In the second episode of Futurama, the Moon is a tourist trap, so of course some poor chump has to stand around wearing a man-in-the-moon costume. Bender stabs the moon-man in the eye with a beer bottle, and the moon man says, "They've taken my dignity, but at least I have my self-respect." Then he bursts out sobbing.
• The Simpsons: "Itchy and Scratchy Land". This is one of the few stories where the Goofy suit guy gets revenge — Homer is locked up because "I kicked a giant mouse in the butt!" Later, when the robots start rampaging through the park, the guy in the mouse costume makes sure that the Simpsons are kicked off the last escape helicopter.
  • In "Radio Bart", Bart has a birthday party at Wall-E-Weasel's Pizza, where the kids start off acting decent to the guy in the Wall-E costume but by the end he's lying on the floor and they're stomping on him.
  • And in yet another episode, some poor schlub dressed as Doc Ock entertains at Nelson's birthday party, and Bart and Nelson beat him with his own tentacles.
  • Inverted elsewhere on the Simpsons — the baseball mascot the Capital City Goofball is revered by everyone in Springfield.
• Danny Phantom, Valerie and later Danny have to wear one of these.
• King of the Hill episode "What Makes Bobby Run?" Bobby becomes the Tom Landry Middle School mascot, then is told of a tradition where the opposing team's band beats up on the Landry mascot if they (Landry) are winning.
• This happens to Candace from Phineas and Ferb while working in the Har D Har Toy Company; after her brothers' Perry the Inaction Figure becomes famous she is forced to wear a platypus mascot costume (and later a brick costume), much to her complete embarrassment.

Real Life

• Truth in Television, as Cracked listed it as a job that's harder than it looks. These mascot costumes can weigh up to thirty pounds — not including the giant bobblehead — can reach temperatures of up to 113 degrees or higher, and seriously restrict the wearer's ability to see and hear (leading to accidents and injuries).