On Tuesday, March 14th, I stopped up at the Pixar offices to meet up with Dylan. Dylan used to live here in Seattle and has just recently moved down to SF. Many years ago, I got a call from Dylan. He asked if I would come to lunch. Half way through lunch he plopped a box containing the mascot on the table in front of me. He proceeded to tell me the story of the creation of the mascot and it’s brethren. He was absolutely giddy with excitement (I will not relate the story here, if you want to hear it, buy me a beer someday and I will tell you. Or maybe Dylan has told it somewhere and will pass on the link to me.).

The mascot was originally designed to be a marketing give-away for Pixar’s Renderman Software at the Siggraph conference. If you do a search on google for “Pixar renderman walking teapot” and you will find lots of geeky entries on the first and subsequent years teapots. I have even seen them for sale on ebay.

While I was visiting Dylan, the mascot was finally able to meet others of his kind.

Dylan let slip that there will be a Walking Teapot retrospective at Siggraph this year. So if you are there, head over the Pixar booth and take a look. He also let me know that even though the mascot traveled ~7000 miles, from the tops of mountains to the deserts of Death Valley, there was one other teapot that has traveled farther. He showed me a picture of a Walking Teapot at the South Pole. The mascot was devastated.

P.S.: The Pixar offices are very nice. I got a quick tour and architectually they are pretty fantastic. Must be nice place to work.