A bit of clarification on the Oddworld Statue
I read a lot of posts about the Oddworld Statue on here (the one where he is standing on the rupture farms barrell), and there seems to be a lot of unnecessary ill-feelings towards it and a lot of wrong information regarding it. I just wanted to clarify its history a bit more (a lot of this has just been from personal research and experience so i could be wrong on some of it. Feel free to correct me if necessary -xavier i'm looking at you-)
The statue was made by a german mannequin company called Muckle Mannequins somewhere between the releases of Oddysee and Exoddus (this is obvious by the 4 finger design and no tattoos. Plus, that's about when i purchased mine 1998-1999ish). Muckle Mannequins primarily makes store front mannequins, but around that time they started making fun statues for their favorite video games. GT Interactive (publisher of Abes Oddysee) comissioned them to make a statue of Abe (The GT Logo is even printed on the Packaging), and the statue went up for sale at $40. Now the legal aspects confuse me, but I think it has something to do with GT Interactive not owning the rights to Abe, so therefore never should have commissioned Muckle to make the statue in the first place. This is NOT the fault of the company who made the statue. Oddworld Inhabitants legally, but kindly, had to tell Muckle Mannequins to quit producing the statue. They did not sue them for lost income, or have any ill feelings. Oddworld inhabitants actually found the statue very flattering (otherwise it never would have been mentioned in the artbook) and according to the former fan-relations guru "alf", even Sherry purchased a statue and had one sitting on her desk at OI. And if it's good enough for the co-founder of Oddworld Inhabitants, then it should be good enough for the fans.
So, the many comments about the statue being "blasphemous" or an attempt to rip-off OI just because it wasn't licensed by OI are not necessarily true. The statue WAS licensed by GT Interactive, there is just always alot of confusion between Publishers and Developers regarding who owns the rights to characters.
And it's not as if Muckle Mannequins made tons of money off of that statue. It was only up for sale for a short amount of time before they stopped producing them and $40 for an 18" resin statue is a hell of a bargain. Because of this, the statue is INCREDIBLY limited and hard to find, which is the defination of a highly collectable item.
The statue itself is a fantastically painted and crafted representation of the Oddysee version of Abe and i'm very proud to own it. It was designed with love for the series and for fans who love it just as much.
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