Squishies

Had a close call earlier this week; I had to make a quick pit stop after work (bran muffin-induced emergency) and found myself in a Tuesday Morning – and ooh, they had some mighty fine high-semigloss Stablemates Mystery Foal Set variations!

They were quite tempting, especially since my attempts last week to track down the Walmart Specials – not to buy, necessarily, but just to see “in the wild” – met with abject failure. Every store I happened to find myself in during my work travels either looked liked it hadn’t been reset yet, or had already been plundered for all the gold. It was nice to see a store with actual models on the shelf, for a change.

Fortunately I managed to escape the Tuesday Morning unscathed, but tomorrow is payday and I’ll be in the same part of town….

…and they had an intriguing Classic Haflinger Mare that is bothering me even more than those lovely little Stablemates. She was seriously squished, kind of like my Woodgrain Boxer here:

He’s normal looking from the side, in case you were wondering:

The Haflinger’s side profile was also distorted – that’s how I noticed she was a little peculiar in the first place – so an even better example would have been one of the later Stablemates G1 Quarter Horse Mares with the twisted barrels. But I am in no mood to go digging through my Stablemates tonight.

I’m fairly sure it was a factory-originated flaw and not one that occurred in shipping, because her shading was exquisite – either someone at the factory took it upon themselves to make up for her other deficiencies, or her more dramatic contours enhanced her paint job naturally.

The Haflinger was obviously a one-off, possibly caused by a handling or machine error while the mold halves were still warm and freshly molded. More uniform examples like the Boxer might be – like Bloaties – a result of climate/temperature changes, issues with the mold itself, or a problem in the assembly process.

(The narrowness of more recent molds – like Duende, or the Imperador das Aguas – is most likely an issue with the metal molds themselves, I think.)

Although not as common – or beloved – as Bloaties, this molding flaw occurs with enough frequency that I feel like I need to coin a name for the afflicted. Collapsers? Squishies? Skinnies?

I kind of like Squishies, at the moment.