Rovio Support ‘Freddie For A Day’ with Freddie Mercury Angry Bird

Freddie Mercury - Angry Birds

Wednesday, September 5 marks the third annual ‘Freddie for a Day‘ fundraising event. The event was created by Liz Swanton, web editor of the Mercury Phoenix Trust, the charity founded in 1992 by Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor and manager Jim Beach to raise money to fight AIDS. Fans are encouraged to don a mustache and dress up like Freddie, and recruit friends, family and co-workers to sponsor their effort.

To help raise awareness and funds for ‘Freddie for a Day’, Angry Birds developer Rovio Entertainment have transforming the flamboyant frontman into a bicycle-riding Angry Bird. ‘Freddie-bird’ has been animated to the tune of ‘Bicycle Race’, Queen’s double-sided hit with ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ in 1978). The song was infamous for it’s promotional video featuring dozens of nude women riding bicycles around Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium (a foldout poster of the event was included in the sleeve of the ‘Jazz’ album).

Rovio is releasing limited-edition Freddie Mercury Angry Bird T-shirt, and making it available in the Angry Birds and Bravado online stores. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Mercury Phoenix Trust.

Last year at this time, I posted about Google’s elaborate Freddie Mercury doodle in honour of his 65th birthday.

UK

Real-World Angry Birds Game Launched in Barcelona

On May 11, in a promotion for Deutsche Telekom, Saatchi & Saatchi U.K. teamed up with game-maker Rovio to create a real world version of the wildly popular mobile game Angry Birds in Barcelona, Spain.

Angry BirdsA mobile phone in a kiosk acted as the game controller, launching the birds out of the digital display and crashing them into the real-world structures.

You can read more about the mechanics of the experience in this Creativity interview with Greg Brunkalla of Legs, the production company tasked with creating the real-life version of the game.

After watching the video, the iPhone version of Angry Birds seems a little tame.