WHAT Superlambananas were to Capital of Culture year, penguins are set to be for Christmas.

Designs were revealed at Liverpool’s Maritime Museum yesterday for the “Go Penguins” public art extravaganza, in preparation for the full-scale models going on display later this year.

Organisers are hoping the public art event will repeat the phenomenal success of last year’s Go Superlambananas.

This time, artists are being invited to submit their designs for penguins, which, from November 22, will start to appear all around the city centre for the festive season.

The preview, held at the Maritime Museum yesterday, was to allow potential business sponsors to inspect and adopt their own penguin design.

The entries were grouped around different categories such as Liverpool, the environment, festive, and people.

Inevitably, many of the designs were inspired by the Beatles, with one showing a group of penguins replicating the famous cover of the Abbey Road album, and another entitled Sgt Penguins’ Lovely Arctic Band.

This year, a number of the designs will feature in areas outside the city, like Wirral, Sefton, and St Helens.

Organisers from Wild in Art – the team who brought the city Go Superlambananas – were inundated with more than 500 penguin designs from local artists.