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In mid-2003, A new section appeared at the official Grand Champions website. It was called Horse Country. A new, "gender neutral" line of models that would soon be available. They were like regular Grand Champions presented in a new theme, that of "wildness" and mustang herds roaming free. This all seemed well and good, especially since Alpha would intentionally be toning down the feminine angle and making them palatable for boys who would want to collect horses.

But somehow, this good idea went horribly wrong. We were picturing beautiful mustangs with their hair in the wind, great colors like pintos, grullos and roans, wild herds having to cope with indians and cowboys chasing them, and mighty band stallions having to fight off wolves and cougars. The herds would explore the mountains and cross dangerous rivers, and they'd have to find water when the drought came, and in summer they'd eat the wild apples and roll in the grass.
And stallions, yes. This was to be a "gender-neutral" line, so the stallion would be central, and they would have cool colors and wild-sounding names, and they would protect the herd, and it would be up to them to save the little foals from being carried off by predators.

This is what being a mustang is all about. Horses can be a girl thing, but the mustang life is naturally rugged and masculine. All you have to do is make long-haired horses, give them strong, earthy names and male personalities, and include stories about what brave adventures they have. And of course sell them with fun accessories like the indians and cowboys, the lassos and wild apples, the cactus and the little cattle skull, and the other wild animals like the mountain lion and the bear and coyotes, the golden eagle that would always be trying to carry off the newborn foals...


Wow, how cool would that be ?? The boys and girls would love it, and the collectors would, too.

But... it all went south. Way, way south.


Hmm... What happened? Well, they all have ugly, cropped hair that looks nothing like a mustang's would. Mustangs are wild! They have long hair because no one trims it. And that doesn't make them feminine. Ribbons and brushes are feminine. Long hair flying in the breeze is just the way a wild horse is supposed to look, and every little kid knows that !

Hmmm... None of the horses have names. And there's no adventure story on the back or anything to give them personality. There's just this dry, historical account that is trying too hard to be educational:

"Horses were reintroduced into the Americas by the Spanish Conquistadors in the early 16th Century. By 1580, there were already wild horse herds in central Mexico that quickly spread north into what is now the American west. These wild herds became known as Mustangs, deriving from the Spanish word Mestena. Since that time the horse population of the Americas has become the largest in the world, the most varied, and the most colorful. Even today, herds of wild mustangs still roam parts of the American west."

Gagh !! That reads like a textbook ! They're actually citing DATES as though any kid is going to care about when exactly horses were reintroduced? This is not interesting. Where is the excitement and the adventure of life in the wilderness? And they don't even give the horses names, so where is any personality they're supposed to have?

I'm not saying they can't make it educational, but they would have to work it into the story arc of each horse having a special history, like where he was born and how he escaped; they could work little factoids into the stories gradually and it would add to the realism. But they can't just take a paragraph out of some history book and call it entertainment.



If they're going for the male audience, they should have started with a bunch of stallions and then slowly worked females and foals into it. I think boys would like to have a whole herd of mustangs, but there should be more male horses than females, generally, in any toy that is geared toward males.

But the biggest problem with Horse Country is that it isn't "gender-neutral." It's "Boys Only," (needlessly!) because what little girl would choose this ugly-haired thing over a regular Grand Champion? And these don't have any accessories, while a GC comes with tack and maybe an ID card, a name and everything.
And these are UGLY! They're all in bad molds with big legs, they all have hair that looks like somebody already took the scissors to it, and they don't have any interesting markings. This chestnut mare is extremely bland, and I haven't seen any Horse Country horses that have good leg markings.
It's a shame, because some of them do have nice paint with great shading, but it's not enough to combat their general fugliness.

So, most collectors won't want them... will the target consumers? My guess would be that boys *might* go for these, but probably just because they are the only horse toys out there, not because they are good toys.


The one nice thing about Horse Country is that some of the horses have lots of shading and unique body colors. So some of them, like this gray mare and foal, may be worth a buy if you're willing to put the effort into re-hairing them. This mare has already gotten a new tail of respectable length. Also, the foals are almost the same as regular Grand Champion foals, so at least there is *something* cute to be had here. Too bad the foals aren't sold separately.

However, it wasn't enough that the Wild Mustang concept had to be executed so poorly. Some horrible and frightening new molds are to be found among the stallion ranks. There are three so far, and this is the saddest part of the Horse Country story, because we can imagine how much money was wasted on them - Money that could have been put into Grand Champions.
These molds are beyond bad. They all have grotesque conformation and are nothing like earlier Grand Champions. Even the competitors like Stable Champions look stellar compared to these.

Here are some reviews and disturbing images of two of the new molds:

Lurching Chestnut Stallion - Gimpy Deluxe!

Racked Roan Stallion - The Horror !!

The hideous Pinto Stallion can be seen in dreadful clarity at Alpha's website. Take a peek if you dare.

On a personal note, I am disappointed in Alpha for foisting this monstrosity on us, and at the expense of Grand Champions, too. I was also informed personally that these stallions were something like prototypes or first drafts, and that the actuals would look different. I was quite peeved when I saw that the "old" prototypes turned out to be exactly the horses being sold now. Also I just have no idea why quaint little Kid Kore and Blue Box have the resources to produce decent and sometimes even beautiful molds, while the famous "Grand Champion" name is now associated with deformed horses fit for nothing but the knackers.



Let us hope that something positive is on the horizon for our GCs. After having their yearly numbers cut in half, and now being sullied by Horse Country, things have not looked this bleak since Empire bit the dust.
I hope it means that things can only improve..?




Go to The ID Site to see their extensive coverage of Horse Country


Seen Enough? (It is pretty awful.) Go back To the White Zone








©2005 Sloane Eljay
Blue Paradise Stables