I Can’t Stop Thinking About These Party Gurl Horses!
Few things are more thrilling to me than seeing a quietly unhinged idea get made! It is a euphoric, often combustible American idea to think, “I will become wealthy if I sell these herbal supplements/knives/essential oils to my friends” or “What if we made a beautiful cheesecake restaurant in an Ancient-Egyptian-meets-Victorian-meets-Vegas atmosphere?” or “What if we dressed a horse in high heels and a tiny purse?”
In 2008, Playmates Toys debuted Struts Runway Magic at the New York Toy Fair. The Bratz version of a horse with a similarly worldly cast—even down to the four characters—cool mares Rio, Sydney, Milan, and Sierra were sold as horses “all with a unique sense of style, glamour, and attitude.” They came with YA-series personality breakdowns of likes, dislikes, hobbies, and fears. Rio is fluent in sign language, Milan adores lasagna, Sierra specializes in floral design, and Sydney is afraid of heights.
In the vein of Satanic Panic, people historically love becoming obsessed with sexuality and toys marketed to kids. I thought this stopped when toys started looking like little alien creations, but Facebook Moms managed to unearth a “the-clouds-spell-SEX” situation recently with L.O.L. Surprise! dolls. Making a toy that mimics some aspect of adult (or near-adult) life is to walk a nearly unpleasable tightrope where both everything and nothing connects to sex.
These horses evoked the same dirty outrage that mid-2000s celebrities brought out in people—easy jokes about whores, wild and irate misplaced sexual desire. Lots of Blogspot posts made “whorses” jokes and seemed to be genuinely incensed about a horse in heels that made them feel uncanny valley arousal? One blog post could only describe them using the words “horrifying,” “unholy” and even referred to them as “busty.” Jezebel went in on Struts, too, describing them as slutty and a “curious combination of anorexic and cleavage-y.” These horses didn’t even have boobs! A Jezebel commenter went in on the “girls have complicated feelings about horses” trope (which has been written about beautifully by Taylor Prewitt here):
Girls are drawn to horses for complicated and deeper reasons than they’re just pretty to look at. There’s something sexual about a girl’s love for horses, but I don’t know how to explain it. I’m sure there have been many dissertations on the subject. Anyway, making these toys up to be super “feminine”/slutty seems to be creating a weird tension between fantasy sexuality and real sexuality that will probably ruin for life the recipients of these wretched toys.
Even if I’m reading way too much into it, the poor children who get these toys are fucked.
Lord, these horses bothered people! The horses’ eyes feel a bit FLIRTY, I’ll admit to that, but they’re mostly just horses wearing pumps.
I was trying to discern just how puritanical we still are about these things, but then I realized most toys are slime now. THAT is hard to put in a short dress! Struts Runway Magic lasted just over a year before they were 86’d. Now, these party-gurl horses are just a blip in a few wonky online toy directories, and someone somewhere around 2008 got demoted or at least put on ice at Playmates.
Twelve years later, I’ve found an image that has delighted my eyes! It’s my—I’m sorry, there’s just no other way to say it—spirit animal.
