Farmer destroys rare Ooshie collectable on live TV over 'awful' taunts
Farmers who were trying to swap a rare Woolworths collectable Ooshie for irrigation water for their drought-stricken farm have destroyed the Lion King toy after facing criticism for their plea.
Having seen the absurd amounts the collectables were being listed for on eBay, Victorian farmers Melisa Portingale and Stephen Black initially decided to use their Furry Simba, one of only 100 made, to try and help raise funds for their bone dry land.
“We were asking about $5,000 for it,” Ms Portingale revealed on Channel Nine’s The Today Show.
But after backlash from the public on Facebook, they decided to tweak their request and instead ask for direct help in exchange for the Lion King-themed Ooshie.
“I decided to go down this path because we were sort of really desperate for money to help the farm,” Ms Portingale said.
“I put a post up on Facebook asking if anyone wanted to buy it and copped a lot of abuse from it so I decided to ask about water instead which seems to be the more relevant issue at hand.”
She said the hate from several people was “just awful” with some even making “suicidal” threats.
In a dramatic twist, Mr Black cut the Ooshie in half live on-air with a pair of scissors after revealing they’d had enough of the abuse.
“For the people who have bullied us. They want to buy this thing... they want it,” Mr Black said.
“This is what I say to them. It’s done. You can’t buy it”.
The pair said they had received dozens of offers on the Ooshie but they all proved to be from people with no intention of actually buying it.
Mr Black said some had even bid on it just to abuse them.
“[Our] mental state at the best of times is really really stretched then you get the abuse on top of that. It's very difficult,” Ms Portingale added.
Desperation due to Murray-Darling Basin crisis
Mr Black said his farm at Katandra West, in northern Victoria, was struggling, and that he'd tried to educate people who had expressed interest in the Ooshie about water management problems in the Murray-Darling Basin.
"I really couldn't understand why that item was worth so much money. But if everybody was so interested in that, maybe they would be interested in what we needed and why, and the message might get out there," he said.
"It's the whole Murray-Darling Basin, the plan is not working.
"The governments need to do something – not put it on the backburner, it needs to happen. It's been going on for too long. People need to be able to run their business and survive."
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