Sep 07 2008
Meet Kimble - on the run to Cannock…
I’d like to introduce you to a horse you may already have seen…
‘Kimble’ is one of our equine models. In the style of Troy McClure from The Simpsons, You may have seen him modelling such products as our Grackle bridle or the Knot Plait Western bridle. He got his name from Dr. Richard Kimble, the character played by Harrison Ford in the film The Fugitive, given his tendency to escape every so often!
He’s also about to become the inspiration for one of the new display horses at the Cannock Superstore.
If you’ve visited our Ashton Superstore, you may have seen that we have our own herd of full-size plastic display horses together with even more full-size heads to display bridles and headcollars.
Unfortunately, these equine mannequins are only available in an unrealistic shiny graphite colour so when we bought the horses and heads for the Ashton re-opening in 2003, we had them all spray-painted in a variety of ‘proper’ horse colours, complete with blazes, stars and socks. They’ve proved to be quite popular with our store customers and we’ve even had enquiries from people willing to buy one.
With a new shop to fill with a new selection of plastic horses, we’re at that stage again and this time, we’re being a little more ambitious. As you’ll have noticed, Kimble is a skewbald and we’ve decided to re-create him in plastic form.
Next week, we’ll be taking plastic Kimble and his plastic friends down to their new home at Cannock - in a Requisite trailer of course!
Before we loaded him up, we took plastic Kimble to meet the real thing. Of course, we also took a camera to record the occasion. As you can see, real Kimble was a little wary, as you’d expect of any horse when faced with a newcomer.
We wondered if the resemblance was probably lost on real Kimble - do horses have any idea what their own markings are? It was much more interesting to see Nigel’s (his stablemate’s) reaction. Of course, Nigel would know Kimble’s markings and his reaction was much more pronounced. As you can see, the meeting was just as if three horses had met for the first time - and just how much we were able to recreate Kimble’s markings. If you’re ever in the Cannock store, make sure you look for him. He’s one of a kind - sort of…
Kimble meets Kimble
I think Kimble’s lookalike is great! How did you spray the colour on because i want a display model to help my students in the riding school with lectures. His mane is good too did you spray something on that?
I was shocked to know the models are about £1000 but if anyone has a second hand one out there - let me know…..
We used normal spray paint from B&Q - a few shades of brown to give definition, and white, obviously. We used the same white spray on the mane which gives it a sort of grey look, not like Kimble’s white mane parts. I don’t know what else we could to to achieve that - bleach it, I suppose, but that’s much trickier.
We have sold to order some the (unpainted) display horses we get every so often, but I can’t remember for how much. I’m sure it was hundreds though - much less than £1,000. If you want to enquire further, call our Customer Service team on 0870 420 3100 and they’ll find out more for you
Thanks,
Paul.