Horses in the Wild 2

September 13, 2023.

Sometimes the horses you see in public are highly derivative. This first entry is only sort-of a horse. It's a baby doll riding in an innertube with a unicorn's head on it, seen at a toys and games store.

Yes, a bit scary. What I found interesting about the horse, though, is that her face looks like that of the Walmart Kid Connection Unicorns. Though the head mold is shared with other ponies, the eye stamp, too, is the same between the floaty-pony and the Kid Connection ones. It makes me wonder how different brands get their horse assets.

The next ponies I saw were at 7/11, the convenience store chain.

These are just kind of funny. Their heads are all beat in, and the picture of the hands stretching the unicorn on the package is pretty silly.

The box art on this horse water ring game struck me as familiar. I realized soon that the horse on the left was traced from a Tokidoki Unicorno. Unicornos are a line of unicorn vinyl figurines sold in blind boxes. They aren't exactly child-friendly toys because they're fragile and have lots of small bits, but it doesn't surprise me that their designs would be appealing to children. This bootleg Unicorno art isn't traced from any particular Unicorno, but most closely resembles Stellina.

The final horse was included partially-submerged in a cup full of plasticy-looking slime. The sinking pony resembles the G4 tall alicorn mold (featured here and here), which I have seen bootlegged elsewhere as rubber keychains.

They look kind of sad and gross. There seemed to be two varieties of horse: blue bodied with purple hair, and yellow bodied with pink hair.