Early in May, as the picnic season started in Ukraine, a local startup put a new barbecue grill on the market. The grill, called Mordor on Fire, is designed after the Kremlin, and when set on fire offers a view of burning walls and towers of Moscow's stronghold.
The grill costs Hr 1,200 and is sold through a
Facebook page that has more than 600 likes. It is a 60-centimeter-long folding
grill. It comes in a wooden box, convenient for transportation.
The whole set weights 11 kilograms, so it’s
convenient to transport the barbeque mostly in a car trunk.
The barbecue’s name is a reference to Mordor,
the country of evil in the classic fantasy book “The Lord of the Rings” by
English writer John Tolkien.
Even though the grill design clearly resembles
Kremlin, the designers claim they designed Mordor and deny any political
motivations. While the real Kremlin clock tower has a Soviet red star on top of
it, the grill version of the tower is topped with a tiny Eye of Sauron – a
symbol and a manifestation of the Mordor’s evil lord Sauron.
The grill costs Hr 1,200 and is sold through a
Facebook page.
“Nothing calms one’s nerves like seeing a
burning Mordor on a warm summer night,” says the grill’s Facebook page.
The grill designers weren’t the first ones to
compare modern Russia to Tolkien’s Mordor.
After Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in
March 2014 and started a war in Ukraine’s eastern regions, many in Ukraine
started referring to Russia as Mordor.
And it seems that many Ukrainians like the
idea of burning it.
“One can endlessly watch the burning Kremlin,”
Cherkasy native Ivan Zozulya wrote on Mordor on Fire Facebook page on April 28.
The designers don’t reveal how many grills
they have sold. While while most orders come from Ukraine, orders also from the
U.S., Austria, the UK, Belarus and even from Russia.
The original barbeques were put on sale at the
end of April. The idea of creating such a barbeque appeared spontaneously.
“Once we were sitting together with our friends around the campfire and someone
joked that it would be cool to design a barbeque with a burning Kremlin,”
designers say.
Currently the barbeque is their only startup
project. Initially the company tested their invention during the Festival of
Panic and Hysteria “At the Bottom” in Kyiv on March 21. For that, they designed
a three-meter brazier. The ordinary barbeques that they sell nowadays are 60
centimeters long and packed in a wooden box. In Kyiv one can pick up the order
at 28 Druzhby Narodiv St. or have it delivered for additional Hr 50. The order
can also be delivered worldwide for additional fee.
The grill’s Facebook page says part of
earnings will be donated to centers that provide psychological rehabilitation
for Ukrainian soldiers that fought Russian and separatist troops in Ukraine’s
east.
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]
