Perhaps someone can help me understand the difference between an anthropromorphic animal mascot (which as a tale as old as time) and a furry? When does one cease to be one and becomes another?
There are animal mascots all the time in sports. Why is that not weird, but it's weird to have a sporty animal mascot for coins?
For me it tends to be realism vs exaggerated qualities? I think these look like furry characters because they have realistic body proportions, structure, and expressions despite the animal faces and features vs something like Mickey Mouse or Sonic the Hedgehog. This allows someone to more easily see in them the physical features humans find attractive, even a lot of subtle ones considering these characters aren’t sexualized in their official art. It’s not perfect and obviously there are people who have cartoonish fursona’s and there’s cartoonish furry porn out there, but it’s a basic observation
was it made by a person with passion for the art, or a soulless corporation for the purpose of marketing and advertising? Usually, you can tell simply by the quality of the art which it is.
to me, just some guy, "a furry" is a person with this particular set of desires or sympathies, and an animal mascot is a marketing function of a business. Entirely subjective, reflexive and subject to cross over.