The Houston Aeros just started using this logo this season. And some of you are no doubt waiting for me to rip this logo to shreds for the way it manages to turn an airplane into a cartoon complete with eyes and teeth when the old logo was a normal plane. If you are one of those people, you need to learn some history. The rest of you probably know that this is an old logo that the Aeros have resurrected. More importantly, the rest of you know that the eyes and teeth are an accurate representation of a World War II era bomber. No, planes back then didn't actually have teeth -- although that would no doubt have been pretty cool -- but they did have fierce faces drawn onto them, as the example to the right shows.

I'm not sure exactly what the intent of painting faces on the planes was. Obviously, there's a certain element of "because it looked cool" involved, but the military has never struck me as the sort of place to permit things to happen just because they look cool. My first thought was that maybe it was intended to intimidate the Japanese pilots. Would it work? I don't know. It might scare me, I'll admit. In the heat of the moment I might see those eyes and that mouth out of the corner of my eye and think there was an actual flying dragon trying to eat me. But I'm scared of heights. If I was flying a plane I'd be halfway to pissing my pants even before you added the people trying to kill me. And don't even talk to me about the kamikazes. Order me to fly a plane into a battleship and I'll say yes sir, hop in that plane, fly to the Falkland Islands, change into a tux, and spend the rest of my days eating fish and trying to fit in among the penguins. And if the sea lions came to attack, I'd run and hide and let the sea lion eat my penguinic brethren. What else do you expect me to do? I'm a coward. I'm also taller than all the other penguins, which means I can outrun those little sons of bitches when mean old Mr. Sea Lion makes an appearance.

Real Japanese pilots, on the other hand, were probably just a little bit braver than me (you've probably figured out that this doesn't take much). I'm not sure that painted teeth on a plane are really going to do much to scare such a person. So we're back at the "looks cool" possibility. And now that I think about it, they also let them put pictures of scantily-clad women on them, so I suppose the teeth aren't really a big deal. Do they still let pilots do that? I suppose the way that our society has gone from considering cheesecake pictures scandalous to considering pornography no big deal, we're probably better off if they don't. Besides, a lot of the planes these days are unmanned anyway. What do you paint on one of those? A cheesecake rendering of the robot from "Lost in Space"?

Another thing that planes had painted on them (and this was actually official) was a colored circle with a cut-out star on it. We don't see this on the plane in the logo, but we do get it as the "O" in "Aeros". That's a nice touch. Another nice touch is the presence of little wings on the "A". I also like the lettering...there's something vaguely Art Deco about them. Indeed, the only questionable thing here is the fact that the plane is coming out of a puck. But while I think it would have been better to draw the whole plane, this is obviously an artistic decision and one I can accept even if it isn't the one I would have made.

Finally, there's the color scheme. You don't get the full effect here, because I'm only showing the logo, but the color jerseys for the Aeros are blue with green and grey trim. That, like the logo itself, is unusual but works well. It's a very classy look.

In short, this is one of the best logos in minor league hockey today. I'm glad they brought it back.

Final Score: -1 point.
Penalties: Name-Logo, 2 pts; Equip-Logo, 5 pts.
Bonuses: Cool-Logo, -5 pts; Local, -3 pts.