News thanks to Simon: “A computer gaming shop in Preston, Lancashire has a 5’10” ish moulded plastic statue of Aragorn in its doorway. He’s dressed in FOTR garb with both hands on his sword and his bow and quiver slung. I asked what the shop were going to do with him at the end of the publicity run, and was given the following answer:
“We had an orc model when the computer game ‘Warcraft’ came out. Someone came in one day and asked what we were going to do with it, and we were going to throw it out. The man made an offer. In the weeks that followed, more offers were made until the shop management made the decision to have the staff auction the orc to the highest bidder. The auction was not publicised, but they simply made a quiet note of everyone’s details and their bid when someone asked over the shop counter. The statue eventually went for over £2000 and the money all went to charity.
The same decision had been reached about the Aragorn figure, and with the interest in the films, he was expected to go for maybe more than the orc. The statue would remain in the front of the shop until after the DVD release of ‘The Two Towers’ “
