Scandal?: Blogger discovers old designs remarkably similar to Zoozoos
Sidin Vadukut -
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 5:43 PM
Ok I won't go all India TV all over this, but blogger Priyank Sharma has a post on his blog that goes like this:
But yesterday, I came across an interesting link which changed my lookout on these Zoozoos completely. I stumbled upon a series of graphics on popular stock imagery website stockxpert by user Huebi (real name: Alexander Hübert from Wuppertal, Germany) which were made available in 2007. The interesting part about these graphics is that they resemble the Zoozoos to quite an extent. In fact, I first thought that these Zoozoos even made it to stock imagery sites… LOL!
Priyank then posts a composition of these images on his blog. Observe:
Now compare the above to the Zoozoo below as seen in a recent Mint news article:
The similarity between the Zoozoo above and the guy in the bottom right of Priyank's image is uncanny. Here is an embed from the Stockxpert website of the concerned image:
As per the Stockxpert website Huebi uploaded the image sometime in January 2008. According to the livemint story about the Zoozoos:
Several characters were drawn up and considered by executive creative director (South Asia) Rajiv Rao and his team at O&M India, before they settled in on Zoozoo.
“We were very close to what you see as the final version of Zoozoo. The only difference was that we had two options, one that looked more like Mr. Potato Head, a completely round body with thin limbs… the other, a thinner version with a big head and scrawny limbs. We picked the latter as it was easier to have head and body movements in that costume,” says Rao.
Coincidence? Inspiration?
Of course everyone loves the funny, original Zoozoo ads. But Priyank's post does make all this a little intriguing...