Looking at a Gift Horse

If all goes well, I will not be venturing beyond what I call the "pajama perimeter" for the next couple of days. (Pajama Perimeter = The places where I feel comfortable being in my pajamas. Generally extends outside to the mail box and back. And possibly anywhere while in my car, as long as I do not exit the vehicle.)

(Yes, I’ve given this concept lots of thought.)

No need for y’all to know why. Just seemed like a good idea when I came up with the notion at work the other day. ‘Nuff said.

I’ve featured this pretty boy in a couple of different places already, but I figured today would be a good day for his "public" debut:

Yep, he’s one of those Flaxen Chestnut "Mystery" Western Prancing Horses, whom I received a while back as a "gift for services rendered" thingie. (More on that another time.) We don’t know much of anything about these fellows, other than the presence of a "B" mold mark suggests a manufacture date of ca. 1979-1982.

And that they are very, very hard to come by. So much so that I, as dedicated a Western Prancing Horse aficionado as they come, never considered him a "grail" item. I don’t think I even put a watch notice on the one that did turn up on eBay a few years ago, because I knew one incontrovertible fact about him: that he wasn’t coming home with me on my budget. 

The previous owner mentioned something about Marney possibly being involved in his creation and/or distribution, which narrows down his possible origin stories, but not as much as you might think.

I have two equally plausible and competing theories about the origins of the Flaxen Chestnut WPH. I’m not saying either one is necessarily the truth, but they might be somewhere in the general vicinity.

The first is that it was some sort of gift/raffle/prize concept that Marney could have whipped up from cull/leftover Palomino Western Prancing Horse bodies at the factory. The color is close enough to the original Palomino that I could easily see this happening with just a little overpainting.

For whom, for what show, or what purpose, I have no clue. Sometimes she did things just because she had the opportunity to do so, and did so.

The second is that they might have been tests of some sort for the #1120 Brenda Western Gift Set that debuted in 1983. The production sets included a Chestnut Pinto Western Prancing Horse with a pattern nearly identical to the original #113 Black Pinto release, with a white mane and tail.

I could easily imagine them coming up with the Chestnut idea initially and painting up a few samples, only to decide later in the process that the set could use a little more "oomph" with some pinto markings. Somehow Marney could have found them knocking around the factory at some point, and took them home for "redistribution" purposes.

Regardless of the nature of his origin story, I love him and I am grateful for the opportunity to own him now.