been bribed in order to hand such an unlikely verdict, but admits that there is no proof. Cheburashka sightings Cheburashka is now a staple of Russian cartoons, and there are several licensed products on the market, such as children's joke books and stuffed toys. He is also one of the few Russian animation characters to be the subject of numerous Russian jokes and riddles. The word "Cheburashka" is also used in a figurative sense to name objects that somehow resemble the creature (such as an An-72 aircraft which, when seen from the front, resembles the character's head) or are just as pleasing as it is (e.g. a colloquial name for a small bottle of lemonadefrom the brand name "Cheburashka"). Cheburashka was also chosen as the official mascot with the main mascots for the Russian Olympic Team in the following games: 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy (with white fur) 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China (with red fur) 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada (with blue fur) Cheburashka also became known in some countries outside the former Soviet Union (and of the Soviet Bloc). He became very popular in Japan after an animated film series about him was shown in 15 cinemas all over Japan and was watched by about 700,000 between summer 2001 and spring 2002. In 2008, the Cheburashka films (as part of the "Ghibli Museum Library") were made available to Japanese cinemas on the same date as Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. An English-dubbed edition of at least one of the animated films was released in 1987, titled The Adventures of Charlie and Cubby. "Drutten och Gena", Sweden In the 1970s a series of children's television shows, radio shows, records and magazines were produced in Sweden with the characters Drutten and crocodile Gena. These two characters were based on a couple of Cheburashka and Gena dolls bought on a trip to the Soviet Union, so they were visually identical to Cheburashka and Gena. ("Drutten" means "one who tumbles down", as one meaning of the Swedish colloquial verb "drutta" is "to fall or tumble down".) But that is where the similarity ends. The two characters sang and told different stories from those in the USSR, lived on a bookshelf rather than in a city and are hand puppets operated in live action rather than stop motion. Only occasionally Swedish