I've hated those Transglobe awnings for years, but it seems like a case of Torontoitis - that is, adding just another visual distraction to assault the senses among the many, many, many that already plague this city.
Either this is a case of the "broken window" theory - where the sloppy maintenance of street aesthetics by the city encourage private property owners to transgress aesthetic sensibilities in other ways - or it's a case of trying to being seen in a landscape of visual pollution by adding an even louder, more offensive shock to our visual sensibilities. You certainly can't avoid those neon blue awnings, even if your eyes have to cut through the usual Toronto landscape of drunken hydro poles, "Think in Spanish" and Reg Hartt posters, illegal billboards, multicoloured newspaper boxes, stainless steel megabins, temporary asphalt sidewalk paving, spraypainted utility markings, dead street trees, giant backlit storefront signs and leftover construction sandbags.
