It sounds like Gamecock and Red Fly Studio are really going to town will the build up to Mushroom Men’s release in the United States in October, I certainly hope the make a similar effort in Europe too.

Up for grabs is the Pax statue (pictured above), the first set of trading cards and a six day cruise from Ft. Lauderdale to Mexico and then back again. Although to be honest I’ll just be happy with the funky statue (and the game of course).

For all the collectors out there, the fine art team at Red Fly Studio put together some kick-ass trading cards, a poster, and hero statue that will be floating around out there. The poster will be available with Rise of the Fungi (DS) pre-orders and the life-size statue with The Spore Wars (Wii) pre-orders. The first 3 trading cards are in the current issue of Nintendo Power (August issue, along with a contest where 2 families can win a trip to NYC for the 20th Anniversary party at the Nintendo World Store in Sept). You’ll also be able to get them at PAX, the 20th Anniversary Party mentioned above, LesClaypool.com, and more. The easiest way to make a complete set of 24 cards will be by pre-ordering the games at GameStop (get a pack of 11 for Rise of the Fungi and different 11 for The Spore Wars and then 1 card will be included with each version of the game).

Mushroom Men Sail the Seas of Cheese…

Les Claypool will be headlining and Mushroom Men will be in full effect aboard Jam Cruise 7 (http://jamcruise.com/). Leaving out of Ft Lauderdale January 4, 2009, they’ll be tons of artists playing day and night as the ship ports in Belize City and Costa Maya.

For anyone interested in winning their way aboard, GameStop is running a special sweepstakes. Visit the competition page for more on that. And for those actually going, they’ll be more great contests to win Mushroom Men stuff while out on the open waters.

Tall Tales of Mushroom Men

There is also a custom Mushroom Men VW Bus in the works (details coming to www.MushroomMen.com soon). And the Space Squid writing contest has 1 week left for submissions (details: http://spacesquid.com).