Short Answer: Squirrels are cute and are a pest.

Long Answer:

Squirrel is a unique name, not used for a model plane before and rarely in aviation in general.

Squirrels are sneaky and unpredictably smart. A pest but still cute. There’s enough appeal there already.

I knew that some of the design choices I made would not be immediately accepted by the traditional model aviation community. I knew that the changes would stick because they were simplifications and they made model planes more accessible to a wider audience than the traditional community. The changes made it easier for newcomers to enter he hobby.

So in a certain sense it a bit of a pest to the modelling community since I would be advocating concepts they disagreed with. When you do something fresh and new you will receive a lot of “That won’t work” and “You can’t do that”. You should never let that stop you.

As it turns out, all the design choices worked perfectly over time and it is now a highly respected and popular design. Many of the design choices are actually seen on other models.