Machinarium is selling the best merch: a bronze statuette of its adorable star
The gold (well, bronze) standard for merch
I don't buy video game merch, and if I did buy video game merch I wouldn't buy statues, and yet... my heart melts looking at Machinarium's hot new merch drop. Amanita are selling a limited run of bronze statuettes of the adventure game's adorable scrap robot star, Josef, and I love him. 405 grams of bronze might sound cold to hold but I know he'd warm my heart.
"Machinarium is an extraordinarily beautiful creation," John Walker (RPS in peace) said in our Machinarium review back in 2009. "It's a sort of beauty that games are almost never graced with." It is very pretty. And prettiest of all is our special little boy, scrap robot Josef.
Amanita's merch store has opened pre-order for the €249 (£210) cast bronze statuette of our boy. Standing 14 centimetres tall, he is striking a cute pose because he can only be cute.
Only 199 of these will be sold, and each of them will come out a little different due to the way they're made. They're hand-crafted by Honza Moštěk, whose site has a few pictures of the source model if you're curious. They expect to start sending out all the Josefs by the end of March 2022. He'll come in a wooden box like a precious treasure, which he is.
I'm not saying you should buy one. But if you do buy one, you should hold that precious boy tight. Even if your body reacts with the copper and turns your skin green. That green patch should be a badge of pride.