Cheburashka

Cheburashka is one of the most popular Russian animated movie character and a toy loved by several generations. Click here to read more about Cheburashka at Wikipedia. Everything was nice and good until the coming of capitalism to Russia. Marketers decided to play on Cheburashka’s popularity picturing the poor little animal on ice cream packages and milk. Eduard Uspenskiy – the author of the Cheburashka book spent several years suing marketing pirates and won at the end. His major argument was that Cheburashka – the name and the image – was his sole invention and has no analogues in the real world or in fiction.

Not quite so. A historian from Ulyanovsk Sergei Petrov discovered that Cheburashka actually did exist in reality. Originally cheburashka was a large float used for fishing nets. When floats become obsolete men used to carve funny animals from them. Those toys for kids were called cheburashkas.

Related Tags: Russia, animation, Cheburashka