Scrat

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Scrat is a fictional saber-toothed squirrel (the species is also fictional) that appears in the 2002 film Ice Age and its sequel, the 2006 film Ice Age: The Meltdown. He is obsessed with his acorn; his main role in the movies being to constantly put his life on the line to get it. Scrat has also appeared in two short films. In the first, entitled Gone Nutty, where he loses his meticulously-organized collection of acorns in a catastrophic chain of events occurring after ramming his acorn into the hole in the exact middle of the collection, and accidentally starting continental drift in the process.

In the second, No Time for Nuts, he finds a time machine left by an unfortunate time-traveller, and visits a number of historical events.

In both Ice Age movies, as well as in the short films, Scrat is "voiced" by Chris Wedge. Though he never actually speaks, his eyes acting, squeals, squeaks, grunts and (more often than not) screams, serve well enough to get his points across.

While constantly hunting for his acorn in order to either bury it or eat it, fate always seems to get in the way and throughout all the series he ends up in often painful and always hilarious situations ranging from being struck by lightning, chased by avalanches, and knocked unconscious repeatedly to running afoul of various animal life and having to fight for his acorn (and generally losing).

His character has proved enormously successful and many have credited him as the most popular character of the franchise.

[edit] Legal controversy

Ivy Supersonic claims the Scrat character concept is a trademark infringement on her "Sqrat" as reported in 2002 on CNN by Jeanie Moos. Ivy's Sqrat is a combination character concept of a squirrel and a rat as new species and Ivy is credited with coining that term for New Yorkers to describe Central Park rodents in 2000, and a small product line of related items was available at that time. Since her trademark was established prior to the movie release of Ice Age, it would appear that 20th Century Fox attempted to skirt the concept, look and feel, and trademark by naming their adaptation as a "Scrat" spelled with a "c" rather than a "q", but the Squirrel/Rat composite was applied to the character now in the Ice Age movie. It is reported that Chris Wedge presented the "Scrat" after exposure to Ivy's Sqrat, and the movie producers liked it enough to take the risks associated with similarity to Ivy's Sqrat. This has spawned a heated debate in and out of court that is on-going.

Counterpoint: Ivy trademarked the term "sqrat" in Nov. 2001, by which time the character design, name, and preliminary sketches of the character Scrat had already been completed (Ivy includes raw sketches of the final Scrat, dated Sep. 2001 on her site). 20th Century Fox changed the character name from Sqrat to Scrat, but since the creature is not described and the proper name Sqrat does not infringe on the descriptive term sqrat, they were not in actual trademark infringement. Trademark law protects uniquely specific logos and phrases, not unique pictures or artwork, which fall under copyright law. Ivy first filed a copyright on her drawing of a sqrat in Dec. 2001. Since the character design of her sqrat bears little resemblance to the character design already finalized in Sep. 2001, 20th Century Fox did not infringe on this registration either. While it may be true that Ivy coined the term and drew 2 logos in 1999, she tried to sell the concept to Hollywood before properly registering either trademark or copyright, and some Hollywood people used her concept as a starting point for their own unique work.

[edit] Trivia

  • Scrat appeared on a Family Guy episode (Sibling Rivalry, episode #72) as a gag.
  • Scrat has 8 clips of himself in every Ice Age movie.

[edit] External links

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