Over the last few months I’ve been working on building a little thing called brand tags. The idea initially came from my belief that a brand is the sum of all thoughts in someone’s head. I then started to think that if you asked enough people for their first thoughts on a brand and then aggregated it, you’d get a pretty good look at what the brand really meant to the world.

Anyway, I was going to do some more work on it (as I haven’t touched it in about a month), but I decided to just release it instead. So, go play with it and see if you find anything interesting. If you want any brands added, let me know and I’ll do it (a comment or email will do).

Thomas couldn’t believe they put up a statue of Rocky outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Not because the location didn’t make sense — Rocky running up the museum’s steps is one of the most iconic scenes in movies history. (Well, in my own history with movies, at least.)

Rather, Thomas is incredulous that anyone would bother. He doesn’t think that fictional characters deserve to be immortalized as statues, and displayed in public forums.

I disagree.

If only to make a point, here is a brief and incomplete tour of fictional characters immortalized in statue form:

1) Rocky Balboa, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Though a Philly cabbie told us recently that the statue has been moved? Boo.)

Rocky can also be found in the small Serbian village of Zitiste, a little ways north of Belgrade.

2) Ignatius J. Reiley from the novel A Confederacy of Dunces, beneath the clock where the first scene of the novel finds him. Formerly the entrance of D. H. Holmes Department store, now a Hotel on Canal Street. (Description from Wikipedia.)

3) Peter Pan. Apparently, there are seven statues of Peter Pan around the world; this is one in Brussels, Belgium.

4) Ralph Kramden from The Honeymooners, outside the Port Authority in NYC

5) Don Quixote, tilting at windmills in Spain

6) Special lucky strike extra, special for MT: Cartoon character Desperate Dan in Dundee, Scotland. Poet William McGonagall, the character’s creator, has been called “the world’s worst poet.”