You have either failed horribly — or succeeded sensationally — when your new mascot is described as the physical embodiment of nightmares.

Granted, it’s the slow time of year in sports, particularly in Europe/Britain/Scotland, which could explain why what seems rather like an amateurish, slapdash effort at mascotry spawned a dozen think pieces throughout Britain.

But that’s what “Kingsley” (above) managed to do for a particularly obscure Scottish Premier League side named Partick Thistle.

The mascot apparently was the brainchild a semi-famous artist named David Shrigley. His creation lured in some of the June-idled journos who set about debating whether or not it was a work of art.

(“We’re talking about it; it must be art” seems to be the consensus.)

It also launched a debate over whether Kingsley was some sort of demented Aztec sun god or Lisa Simpson on a bad day.

(The writer for the Daily Telegraph suggested: “The head looks like Lisa Simpson if she had been tortured and then melted. And then addicted to crystal meth for a while.”)

It also prompted a writer for The Guardian to launch into a history of Partick Thistle (sometimes, he notes, “corrected” by copy editors to Patrick Thistle), the distant third club in Glasgow. The chilled-out, secular-humanist team in a city otherwise defined by ferocious sectarianism between the Roman Catholic-backed Celtic and the Protestant-supported Rangers.

Soccer in Scotland is a big deal, not far behind caber-tossing, but any club that isn’t Celtic or Rangers is little-recognized, even by folks who live further south on the same soggy island.

(Hibs? Hearts? Aberdeen? Ross County, St. Mirren and Motherwell?)

So, the mascot.

A success, because thousands of people who never heard of Partick Thistle have now.

But art? Not when the inspiration for the mascot so clearly was the logo of the club’s corporate sponsor — it can be seen about 25 percent of the way down this web entry. Not only the spiky sun rays, but also a slogan (“down to business”) the club intends to use, and the name “Kingsley”, a slight tweak of  “Kingsford Capital Management”.

I think it’s a hot mess, the whole of it. If I were a Partick Thistle fan, I would prefer to be known for a harmless little club that sometimes plays in the top flight.