Lucky

It's a shame that Disney is seen by some as an evil empire. Pejoratives like Disneyfication are virtually synonymous with the sanitization and degradation of American culture. Why do I say a shame? - because Walt Disney was a real visionary and one of the most influential men of the 20th century - one of the creators of some of the most durable fictional characters. In his lifetime, Disney won fifty-nine Academy Award nominations and twenty-six Oscars
Perhaps it's just an inherent downside to anything really good - that it will be overdone, spun, extended, commercialized, branded, marketed. We live in a time when the means to overdo are readily available - powerful tools, technologies and ways of distribution. And of course the tremendous money behind it all drives everything.
Over the weekend, NYC was host to the first World Science Festival. This was a combination free outdoor street festival and also a series of programs with renowned scientists including many nobel laureates. The programs were ticketed events held around the city in various venues. Many were sold out. The free outdoor festival, held in and around Washington Square Park, was oriented towards the entertainment and education of children. See here for more photos of the event.
The central event was Lucky the Dinosaur - a free-roving audio-animatronic figure created by Disney's Imagineers over a period of five years and unveiled in 2005 (audio- animatotronics were invented by Disney and made their major debut in 1963 with a display of singing birds and flowers at The Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland Resort).
Dinosaurs are ever popular with children, so it should come as no surprise that Lucky is an enormous hit wherever he goes. He can walk, talk and interact with people. He also can sniffle, burp, hiccup, sneeze, yawn, cough, giggle, snort and purr ...