Analysis
Barks had heard jokes about square eggs and chickens since his childhood and decided to use them as an idea for a story. The plot combines themes and story elements that Barks often used in his stories. A mythical creature or legendary artifact that leads to an adventure expedition, the long search for information, often seeming futile, an isolated civilisation hidden from the outside world thanks to its natural environment, the Ducks bringing new ideas with them but sometimes faced as threats, and the characters ending up defeated and empty-handed are all such themes.
The story has been considered as representative of Barks' work in general and successful in its own right, and has often been declared Barks' best. References to this story are often in the works of Barks' "successors" and fans of his work in general. The author himself told in an interview in 1962 that "My best story, technically, is probably the square egg one."
Don Rosa liked this story so much that he wrote two related stories - The Son of the Sun and Return to Plain Awful.
Read more about this topic: Lost In The Andes!
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