Blue PHP ElePHPant plush toys are so yesterday. Ben Scholzen (you might know him as DASPRiD on IRC/Twitter) is now taking pre-orders for green Zend Framework ElePHPants. Yes, they are green. Yes, they have "ZF" printed on them. No, they are not a repository of Zend Framework knowledge. We tried really hard, but Intel insists that magical toys from the future are not real. Ben needs to reach a minimum production order of 1000 small ZF ElePHPants and is currently hovering at around 200 after the weekend. If you, your user group, or your pet poodle want one of these, visit Ben's pre-order page for more information.

As of the time of this post, the orders for these elePHPants is at about 190 out of the 1000 needed, so if you'd like to pick some up, get over and put in your pre-order now!

April 19, 2011 PHPère is happy to show you the first pictures of two premature elePHPant the 6th generation of PHP. As you can see ... ElePHPant the blue, is in great shape and has found its new home very pleasant

These are shots of the first turnouts of this latest batch and the rest will follow in June/July of this year. Those that have already ordered them will be contacted soon and, if you're interested in picking up some of your own, send them an email for complete instructions.

If you have missed the boat of the first generation of elePHPants, now is the right time to catchup up and participate to the 2008 generation! As for the first generation, this project is open to every PHP User group and aficionados, that want to adopt elePHPants, small or big.

Pricing is 4 Euros per elephant (in a 50 count box only) or 50 Euro for one of the larger elephants. They're even open to having company logos ("your own brood") added to the other side of his back. You can find more details on getting your hands on one at this page on the Nexen.net website or just head right to the order form to get a little blue PHPer to call your own.

Cal Evans from the Zend DevZone - being the awesome guy that he is - has graciously offered to mail out to the first 10 people who donate to PHPWomen $50 or more, a PHP elePHPant. Yep - you get one of the hard to find and much sought after plushy PHP elePHPants.

You can find out more about the goals for their fund raising in this other post to the PHPWomen.org blog as well as information on submitting whatever you feel like donating (time or money).

The elephant is a community project. It was started as a crazy idea that I used to suggest to a number of people. I managed to draw a lot of happy smile, but I suspect that half this happiness was due to sheer craziness of the project. [...] Of course, it was impossible to prototype this mascot without involving Vincent Pontier. The rest is history. We started prototyping, and within a month, we got this excellent looking plush toy (we'll tell you about the manufacturer once we get the full load of them).

Check out the post on Nexen.net for lots of product shots (including the obligatory cute kid shot) and details on how it was developed and the answer to the important question - where you can get your hands on one.

Some groups have already ordered a large number of them for themselves and their members, but an online shop is coming soon to Nexen.net where you can pick up your own fuzzy bit of PHPness.