Long Horns

I was doing some Spring cleaning in my office yesterday, and made a little discovery as I was rearranging the Longhorn Bull shelf:

That the horns of the Longhorn Bull had been shortened somewhat over the years was something I already knew and understood; the 7.5 inch wingspan on the original releases is gigantic, and something of a packaging nightmare. But I didn’t realize they were shortened by two inches! (One inch per horn - from the base, I assume.)

I was so fixated on the quirky, changeable positions of the horns - up, down, turned around - that I didn’t notice the length of the horns had changed that dramatically. Holy cow!

This Palomino/Tan Longhorn is the only vintage one I have out at the moment - he’s so vintage, he even has eyewhites - so I can’t say when the shortening occurred. All of the others that I have on display are post-1998, and all have the shorter horns.

It was probably a while ago; for some reason it’s these kind of "What the… when did that happen?" changes that go unnoticed for years, while we fixate on the more inconsequential ones.