So a week or so ago I was walking in the mall (I really don't do that often honestly) when I saw this on practically every ad kiosk in the place. That's a new War Horse movie poster and it will be out in theaters within two weeks on Christmas day. Is your holiday enforced shopping done yet?
I can't help but notice they gave Joey, the horse, digital hair extensions. Gives him that more dramatic Friesian-y appearance. Not that I have anything against Friesians mind you. But goodness knows if they came in more colors Hollywood would use them exclusively. I know a place where you can get that bit too... at a, um... pretty Friesian tack store.
Ok the Friesianfication of horses in movies should be for another post. Though I have to say I don't know why a horse in the first World War would be wearing a Portuguese curb bit. I may need to let rabbitsfizz rant it with all the other historical inaccuracies from the trailers alone.
And to go with our new poster here are another trailer. Have-at horsey people.
So you may have read about and seen the trailer for Brave, Pixar's new animated movie, in this former post. That was just the teaser trailer making the viewers excited for what might be coming next. Heck, it worked for me. Now we get so see more insight into the movie and thank goodness they are not giving the whole plot away on a silver platter.
The hair physics are awesome, the plot looks intriguing, and the horse animation and anatomy look drool worthy. Yup. Wanna see it.
It happens. You're doing something else with radio on in the background, not really focusing on anything, and then BAM! Some voice says something about horses and your ears automatically start paying attention. It's really amusing when this happens in a college dorm full of equine majors.
Why is this? If it happens to you, I'm sorry. It means you're a Horse Person. (The condition of HP is not to be confused with the condition of Harry Potterhead, plaguing fans of a book series by J.K. Rowling.)
It is a condition with no known cure, no 12 step program. But don't start making arrangements for the men in white coats yet. It can be managed, and you've likely already been living with it for years.
We can contact your therapist and MD later. This post is about horse songs!
Yes. Horse songs. And I don't mean songs particularly about horse, but even songs that just have a line or two. I've been subconsciously taking note of these and now I get to share them with you guys.
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Wild Horses sung by Natasha Bedingfield
Equines running wild and untamed have always been a powerful image of freedom. Although I don't think wild donkeys have gotten the same romanticized treatment as their horsey counterparts. Usually horses are running so they don't get eaten, but the pretty imagery is still there.
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A Horse Called Golgotha by Baroness.
And now for something completely different... If you aren't a fan of metal, just don't click and skip ahead to the next song.
WSTopDeck shared this song with me. Blame her.
Although from what I can tell the Baroness are a bunch of dudes. But so is the band Bare Naked Ladies, so I digress. What does this have to do with a horse and why are they named Golgotha? Well, here are the lyrics I could find in case you don't speak heavy metal.
Call the boy He's down the hallow Cull the tide Distill the rye
Now it's time for medication Stallions on the eiderdown
The stained horizon Ablaze with revolvers Stampedes and bridles
Exorcise the family demons Stallions on the eilderdown
The stained horizon Of the dark rein and rider The steed named Golgotha
That actually sounds like a really pretty poem. It also sounds like a bunch of Vikings are about to mess someone up, but dang are they going to ride in style doing it.
~~~
Dog Days by Florence and the Machine
This one got some top 40 playtime on the radio and they are becoming one of my favorite bands. The horse line starts at 1:00.
Instead of wanting to emulate wild horses like the first song, you better run from them. Yes the music video has no ponies and instead has some blue Snookie smurfs (I swear one of them looks like Quinn from Glee). But if you like this song check out their other stuff, it won't disappoint.
~~~
Dark Horses by Switchfoot
I first heard this next song on TV. It was late, insomnia was looming, and Conan O'Brian was on after whatever I was watching before it. The term dark horse has to do with being a little known underdog. The origins of the term are rooted to horse racing. It counts! XD
I listened to Switchfoot a little when I was in high school and dang it if I don't love this song now.
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Yellow Horse by Cowboy Racer
This one shouldn't be too weird if you've lasted this long... Scratch that it's still going to be weird. The pony in the video is cute. Blame goes to Beautygirl1510 for sharing this on her iPod when we drove to the tack store one day. Fitting name and their first single. It's catchy.
If Mr. Ed ever gets a modern makeover I'm pretty dang sure this will be the new opening theme.
~~~
Electric Twist by A Fine Frenzy
This next one is probably my favorite of the bunch. It's just fun!
Inspired by true events. See larger version on DA here.
This really happened at the hayride I went to with my friend. No offense to cute little chestnut sabinos, but they aren't the scariest thing while their flashy chrome markings daintily trot towards you. I think the Friesian was off that day.
Ok, I'm just going to stop planning what I'm posting. Otherwise it's going to make me a liar when I end up posting something completely different. XD
Without further delay the My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Sim ponies! Had to do a bit of tweaking with the markings options, but for what was available I'm glad I could get them this close. Controlling precise marking locations in the pet maker is a sketchy and hard to control when the markings get tiny. I'm thinking it will only be a matter of time before the MLP fan masses create Sim modifications to make horses exactly like the cartoon.
Dr. Whooves! I also fiddled around with the breeding options in the demo. If you're looking for genetic accuracy don't look here. It uses the blending inheritance theory. A long disproven belief held in the 19th century that offspring are a resulting mishmash of mom and dad. Dominants and recessives be darned!
Behold, a puggle.
It's totally understandable that this game would use this method of making offspring. You can make completely unrealistic colors and markings. What would the inheritance of a lightning-rainbow-cloud marking be anyway? And the color purple. Is it recessive, or the result of the blue modifier working on a red-based coat? Are teal and green eye color co-dominant?
Confused yet? Yah, accurate genetics would fail in this uber-customizable setting.
That said I performed something blasphemous and attempted a breeding between Rainbow Dash and Dr. Whooves. It illustrates the game mechanics of inheritance fairly well. The first offspring looked like a pretty even split of both parents, while the second looked exactly like rainbow Dash but inherited the Dr.'s eyes. So the degree of how mixed the offspring become varies.
Sims 3 Pets also has had a whole bunch of commercials for it recently. Some of them are exclusive only to the internet. Do you know Randall? You might. Because honey badger don't care. (Language warning. Not that you guys who still watched the Equus Retrospective after being warned will care anyway).
The Sims got Randall to do a commercial for them explaining all the animals you can get by pre-ordering S3P. Sadly, no unique pre-order horse designs. Sigh. I wanted a robo pony.
Also how cute is this commercial tribute to the Old Spice guy for Dreamwork's Puss in Boots movie?
So the comic is delayed further due to family hospital emergency. Everyone is alright thank goodness. I spent the weekend with my grandmother and when I had some down time I checked out the demo for Sims 3 Pets.
The blame for this week goes to ThirdPeppermint and Krickette from Color Genetics Info Forum! Peppermint posted about the S3P release and how it includes horses, and Krickette assured me that I could avoid unwanted EA Games spam when I downloaded the demo. Thanks to both of you! ^_^
The demo only has the pet creator and you can't actually interact with anything you make in it. But dang have I wanted insane custom colors for horses in a game. I might do a quick video on the demo but there are some already on YouTube from other players.
In the mean time I'll share the unusual colored horses I was able to create based on real unusual colored horses. I apologize to any owners who find these silly Sim versions of your lovely horsie color oddities. ^_^
Litningur frá Möðrufelli a confirmed chimera.
His front half is flaxen chestnut and his butt is black. (I dare you to say that name 10x fast if you can't speak Icelandic)
I had a comic planned for this week that didn't get done in time. It will be a continuation of VP IRL including more horse apparel craziness. Next week!
So instead I've decided to do a behind the scenes of eventual future randomness. I really don't have planned release dates for anything as you may have noticed and some of this stuff may not be out for awhile. Still getting the hang of making videos (like the 7 months for the Mary King vid, yeahhhh) and hopefully with practice things will come out quicker and better.
I'm planning on doing one more review of a video game before delving into a movie or TV show. So what other projects does VP have in store for the future? And what the heck is a Mo puppet?
Well Mo is the faithful, non existent, generic vectorized demonstration horse. He's in the logo.
Our hero.
Mo gets manipulated, prodded, tweaked, and rotated into different positions. His limbs are also detachable and your average model has 17 separate parts.
If you tilt your head and squint your eyes it spells FWOSH... sorta.
And like GLaDOS from Portal, I keep stockpiles of 'test subjects' for various purposes.
This is one section of a much larger example of the madness.
Mo is fairly versetile in that a few modifications can make him appropriate for representing various characters and actions in the videos and posts.
Shh. It's Heather on Beauty. She has orange tack and green everything.
So in regular Guess That Pokemon fashion we have a sneak peak of some future projects in silhouette from.
See how many you can guess.
And officially the next video is going to be Equestriad. I'd like to thank Dreamflite from Blab!
Alrighty, so about 7 months after wanting to make this video it is finished. This is the first video that includes in-game play, and is the first official VirtualPwnies game review. Yay, streamers, and cake! The cake might be a lie though. SPACE! (Alright, that is a sign that I need to play Portal...)
I'm going to be looking into different formats and editing software for future videos. But I'm glad it's finally done. ^_^
I'm currently limited to PC games since I don't yet have a way of recording console games. The short list for future game episodes is:
Equestriad - Another old-school 3 day event game The Secret of the Magic Crystals - See HERE Willowbrook Stables Saddle Club Adventure - Crashes a lot, so it's going to be on the back burner and Let's Ride Friends Forever - and ever, and ever, and ever...
Ok, another MLP post. I've been doing some work on the eventual My Little Pony Friendship is Magic episode between the Riding Star work.
The infamous Riding Star episode is making progress although slowly. Windows Movie Maker Livesucks. Just throwing it out there. They reduced the program to a slide show maker with almost no options for further customization or editing. However, Windows Movie Maker the older version before Live, is nowhere near as frustrating to work with. I'm an Adobe Flash person, so WMM has a learning curve. With luck I might have the review done by next week's post. YAY!
Back to My Little Pony FIS. I've been watching the show, taking notes, making the Mo puppets, researching bronie culture... So dangitt I have MLP on the brain.
Also Kelpie and DemonicSymphony have gotten me to thinking about real life MLP colors. I affectionately blame you both this week.
So here is a personal take on possible coloration of the FIM ponies. WARNING: The following contains a horse genetics geek-out. I apologize if I sound like a raving lunatic who makes no sense. We sadly do not provide glowsticks for the rave.
Twilight Sparkle
Seal Brown Roan - E( ), At( ), Rn( ) Her body is lighter than her mane and tail, and she has too much warm in her tone to be a blue roan, but not enough to be a bay roan so seal brown is a happy medium. Even, Dr. Sponenburg a horse color genetics researcher calls Seal Brown with Roan 'Purple Corn'. (Please, Dr. Sponenburg. The names! The silly phenotype names!) Speaking of silly...
Pinky Pie
Chestnut Roan with minimal Frame or Splash - ee, Rn( ) with ON or SplN Chestnut roans are pink. XD Frame and Splash can cause blue eyes and in minimal form don't always leave white markings.
Rarity
Grey with dark mane and tail, minimal Splash or Frame - E( ), A( ), G( ), with ON or SplN Rarity is mostly white with a purple mane and tail. So a dilution for her wouldn't work since none of them would allow a body that pale with a mane and tail that dark. So she could be a grey with a black mane and tail that have yet to follow the rest of the body. A bay base would more easily allow the body to get lighter first because of the red pigment which often grays faster. And for the blue eyes she could have minimal Frame or Splash. Poor fashionista would get gray hair soon at this phase of grey progression.
Applejack
Gold Champagne - ee, Ch( ) I have to go with Kelpie on this. Flaxen sorrel was probably the color intended for her as DemonicSymphony stated. The light mane and tail, golden body and green eyes would all fit perfectly for a Gold Champagne (Chestnut + Champagne Dilute) As an added bonus the Champagne dilute exists in stock horses like this western gal.
Fluttershy
Perlino - E( ), A( ), CrN Fluttershy had me wondering for awhile. Her mane is too dark for a palomino even though she is a pale yellow elsewhere. Her light colored eyes made me realize that Perlino would be a good possibility for her. 2 cream genes on a bay can create a light cream toned body and almost rust colored mane and tail. It also makes those light colored eyes. I guess you could also get a palomino with pinto blues and dye the hair pink. Someone has to do that for a costume class. :P
Rainbow Dash
No clue... ??, ??, ?? Nope, no idea. If you leave a blue roan under a rainbow you might get that color for awhile. Then again, she could be the mount of the Native American Thunder Spirit (pictured above) who has a rainbow for it's tail. It is strangely fitting since she can control rain clouds...
If you guys have your own theories share 'em. Speculate the madness!
So yesterday myself BeautyGirl1510 WSTopDeck and others went to the NY Renaissance Fair in the Sterling Forrest in Tuxedo NY. Im posting this to the blog since Ren Faire = horses.
I unfortunately don't bring cameras to these things but BeautyGirl1510 might be posting about it on her blog Blackthorne Studios with images of her crazy dress she made for it. It's the kind of dress that would make you want to twirl around the mountains via the way a Disney Princess would.
There was a joust, of course, and we had the brash Scottish knight who wore a kilt with his plate armor. A gaited chestnut amongst the jousting ponies wasn't happy that the humans were dawdling before he could do his job in the games.
There was Hey Nunny Nunny a comedy duo of two nuns making various religious jokes. There was Dextere Tripp the crazy stunt man who had fircrackers and explosives ductaped onto his body while balancing on a ladder. Ok that's not very renaissance-y but everyone got to put him out with water balloons.
I wish I did get a picture of this but there were two people who dressed as unicorn-girls to the faire. I possibly would have paid someone dressed as a fairy to recite the butterfly's monologue from the Last Unicorn to them if they knew it. XD
My beau also got me a Harmonic Way Epona Horse Heart Pendant. ^_^ The horses are doing a hoof bump.
"Affection for another kicks ass." "Yah bro."
And upon searching for Ren garb for said beau we found a shirt and went to pay for it. Upon handing my card over the owner of the shop (who appeared to be a relative of Professor Sybill Trelawny) they stared at the card and started sing-songing "I see a pony, I see a pony, it's a pony!" (woman after my own heart.) Apparently a pony was the secret item of the day at this shop and my American Quarter Horse Association card counted as a pony. Got a free shirt with my purchase. Yay for being an equine enthusiast!
First off I want to have a huge thank you to everyone who has so far participated in the questionnaire. Suzie and Maria from Centenary, thanks so much for your kind words you guys made my week. ^_^
Just because a week has gone and a new post is up doesn't mean it's over. If you want to still participate please do! If I get enough responses I'll have a post dedicated to breaking down the results of replies.
~~~
So this past week the awesome Admin from the equine genetics forum I'm a participant on posted this interesting excerpt from Types and Market Classes of Livestock, By Henry William Vaughan. You can blame her for this entire blog post. :P
"Color With the possible exception of the saddle horse color is of more importance in heavy harness horses than in any other type The dark solid colors are preferred as being in proper accord with the elegant vehicles drawn by this horse White ankles are often favored because a horse so marked has his action emphasized and easily seen Grays roans and light colors are heavily discounted or even rejected except for certain special restricted uses such as sporting tandems road fours or cross matched pairs and in horses for ladies use even the white markings are discriminated against True elegance and good taste are wanted and this excludes colors that are flashy and calculated to attract undue attention."
This caused my imagination to kinda run with itself. Click to enlarge or view higher quality at DA here. Two overly aristocratic ladies gossiping over the impropriety of flashy colored horses.
Yes horses with too much 'chrome' were horribly out of fashion in those days. Meanwhile back in the 1700's white and fancy colors were all the rage. You know those Lippizans? Those uniform gray prancing ones from Vienna? This is what they looked like a few hundred years ago. Yah, crazy right?
So really if anyone was anyone back in the early past century then their horse was as plain, normal and unassuming as possible.
Ugh. A blaze and palomino? What were they thinking giving it a show. It learned to talk just to get people to look at it. Pay it no mind, and keep walking. It can smell disgust and fear.
Viggo Mortinson you attention seeking harlot of poor taste! Who let you in front of the cameras on that creature?
No more. No more! Is that purple and a horn? What in heavens is on it's hindquarters? My weak constitution can't take much more of this.
Yah. Better to let this fall away into the aether.
~~~
Speaking of My Little Ponies, Kelpie from HGS has made us no longer need to wonder what Applejack from MLP Friendship Is Forever might look like as a real horse.
If you believe in alternate universes or string theory, this does exist somewhere.
This is Kelpie's horse Pyrros. And an interesting story occurred because of it:
"-when I showed my husband [the picture it] caused us to end up in an argument over whether Applejack is palomino or flaxen chestnut. (I maintained flaxen chestnut as her mane and tail were not white, he maintained palomino because her body was too yellow. I guess someone should jump in with "gold champagne" next since her eyes are green.) UBER CARTOON-HORSE PHENOTYPE NERD ARGUMENT."
And it is for the uber cartoon-horse phenotype nerdness that we thank you. ^_^
Alrighty. Mary King's Riding Star video is cursed. Pretty sure. Will get done eventually if the computer program gods stop hating this project.
Anyways.
So I've been doing this blog for a few months and honestly... I have no idea who my audience is. Comments are few and I'm just curious about the people who find this amusing enough to take a look. I have 6 followers currently and I thank each of you. I can find out what interests you on your own blogs. (Insert evil laughter)
But more than those 6 visit the site. And I want to get you guys out of the woodwork and find out more about you. What do you like? What do you watch? Various random horse related questions as well. So I made a list of said questions that I'd really truly like to know. I will be staring rudely and taking notes.
And for those of you who are artistically inclined I have a meme of these questions that you can use on DeviantArt here. You can draw. Add photos. Or create your responses reenacted with model horses (I'm looking at you Model Horse Blab readers).
So here are the questions. Please feel free to share your answers in the comments and send a link to the image version if you fill it out. ^_^
1) What is your favorite horse book?
2) What is your favorite horse movie or movie horse?
3) What is your favorite horse related video game?
4) What is your favorite horse breed?
5) What is your favorite horse related TV show? (Silver Brumby, My Little Pony ect.)
6) What is your favorite mythical horse? (unicorn, pegasus, centaur, tikbalang ect.)
7) We have reached the end. What steed would you dramatically ride into the sunset on?
As some of you may know, I am an equine color genetics geek. Hardcore. How genetics influence an animal's appearance and health is fascinating to me. I have old books from my mother's days in college studying pre-vet courses that I grew up reading as a kid. It is my addictive hobby that does not have a 12 step program.
So some of you may have come across a color simulator that had a 3D horse with buttons for each gene at a particular locus.The color would change on the modeldepending on what genes were activated. It was a bit outdated with its genetic accuracy but it was still fun to play. And I have to give kudos for it having a 3D horse with texture maps applied to it.
The only things I really ever successfully made in 3D were acoffee cupandtoaster. I attempted my own horse color simulators twice. One inPowerPointand the other in HTMLfor college projects, but neither were spectacular by any means. And for me coding is not a forte. So this simulator has a whole lot of respect from me.
Well, recently it's creator Jennifer Hoffman has given it a complete revamp with more colors, a 2D horse for the examples and she has been updating the genetics to be more accurate. There are all 4 options at the agouti locus, LP and PATN1 interact as partial dominants, gray actually grays out, and you can only have 2 KIT mutations at a time. I know most of you probably have no clue what I'm on about but it's really neat I assure you.
Jennifer joined Horse Grooming Supplies Forum after seeing a critique of her simulator and asked the color gurus for help in making everything more accurate. Myself and the other equine color genetics enthusiasts on HGS got to help contribute information on how the genes and colors interact with each other. I asked Jennifer if I could feature her here on this blog which she agreed to.Give us a quick run down of who you are and how you got involved in horses. My name is Jennifer Hoffman. I'm a 3D tech artist/animator by trade (I do animation and the systems set-up it requires for 3D media). I had a horse crazy spell in middle school when I knew a few people who had horses and I could go riding with. And while it sort of tapered off when it became clear that I would never own a real horse myself, it seems like once you taste the horse frenzy, it never truly leaves you. One of my other hobbies / off and on fascinations is genetics, so its no surprise that horse genetics is something I think about from time to time.
How did you come up with the idea for the color simulator?In 2007 the game studio I worked at shut down, and in my period of joblessness that followed I played with the idea of doing web design instead. That was when I started to work on the original color simulator. I had been playing with fantasy genetics sims online and was disappointed in their lack of depth, but before I could build up the courage to invent my own genetic schemes, I thought I should tackle a project with real genetics first. That became the horse color simulator. I did eventually go on to make my fantasy genetics sim, which is a griffins virtual pet game.
What programs and methods were used to create the color simulator? I'm sort of old fashioned with my web work, so the horse simulator was made in HTML, CSS, and vanilla Javascript by means of a text editor. The original simulator used a horse model I had made for the game studio that closed its doors, which I had extensively re-textured to cover all the variation I needed. In my revamping I switched to painted graphics so I could have more control over the subtle color changes. What has been the hardest part of creating this project? The hardest part of the project was, and probably still is, accounting for all of the ifs, ands, and buts with regards to genetic interactions. Finding good information on just how all of the different moving parts mesh together is tricky, and its also rather tedious to make all of the minor but important changes to the various graphics. A thing like palomino vs dunalino is subtle, but if you don't include it the genetics just aren't very solid. The duns and silvers in particular probably doubled the number of graphics files I had to make.
What is/are your favorite horse color(s)/pattern(s)? My personal favorite colors are any variety of gray (not the gray gene in particular), and I usually gravitate towards grullo. I have a friend with a really lovely Peruvian horse which I think is a dark-maned black silver. He's got a lovely chocolate coat with a slightly more caramel colored mane and some really striking eyes. I've been leaning more towards that lately as a result, but I'll probably eventually wind up back at gray.
Who is your favorite fictional horse? (mythological/literary/movie/video game ect.) My favorite fictional horses are actually not named characters, though they really stole my heart. They're the horses from the video game Assassin's Creed. I saw a joke once about the girlfriend who stole "Assassin's Ponies" from her boyfriend, and I think it probably applies to me. Don't get me wrong, I love the game overall, but I spent way more time than you're supposed to just riding around on their horses. It's got some of the best controls I've ever seen for horse riding in a game, including the games that are supposed to be completely about horse riding. I adore the almost imperceptible delay between when you give a command and when the horse obeys.It doesn't do exactly what you ask every time, but the result is a smoother ride where some of the idiotic buttonpresses you make get ignored.
I have a website where I showcase my professional work, mostly consisting of animated shorts or animation-related stills:www.jenniferhoffman.net
~~~ Check out her stuff it's really neat. Themoving horseanimation she has done is adorable.Equine game developers take note.
He was going to be featured here eventually. If you've been watching any American commercials over the past year and are equine inclined, you probably know of the Old Spice Guy, A.K.A. The Man Your Man Can Smell Like. He's on a horse.
Old Spice has also had equines in their marketing before. The Centaur Man was used a few years ago but didn't leave as much of an impact.
Plus there's that whole, 'is it bestiality' thing with his human wife and other stuff we'd rather not think about.
So who is this Old Spice Guy? This man we want our men to totally smell like?
He is Isaiah Mustafa. Besides being Old Spice Guy, he is also a comic book fan and takes his daughter to California Comicon every year. So he gets extra kudos points from the land of geekdome. He is also a vegan so animal rights activists don't need to put him on a list or anything.
This Old Spice Guy marketing scheme has been very notable with Mr. Mustafa, and strangely it seems to be alcoholic drinks that are trying to steal the thunder. Would be interesting to have a meeting of The Old Spice Guy, the Dos Eques Most Interesting Man In The World and Key Stone's Keith Stone. Old Spice Guy and Dos Eques Have Keith beat in equestrian ability though.
I say there should be a jousting part of said made up tournament. Old Spice Guy would probably ride backwards, Most Interesting Man possibly using ninja fencing techniques while doing dressage yoga. It shall be an epic battle my friends.
I'm On A Horse, has become a catch phrase for the Old Spice brand and they sell merchandise with it.
The original commercial has even been parodied with Grover from Sesame Street!
If you didn't at least get a smile from this yours may be a hardened dark soul.
Recently there has been a brouhaha about the latest Old Spice commercials including that face on every bodice ripper novel of the 80s and 90's, Fabio. In commercial land he apparently wants to take over as the new Old Spice Guy. The gauntlet has been thrown.
"Mine is a horse."
This has caused an uproar in the online community. What about Isaiah? Will we have to stare at Fabio now? Please no! The horror! However, that commotion seems to be the plan of the company. Isaiah is still employed with Old Spice and they admit to having more plans for him. This seems to be a ploy to get more people interested in the products and specifically the actor who is most closely associated with them in the public mind. Check out the outcry on the Old Spice YouTube page. People are pissed.
Why is there so much of a hubbub about all this? Honestly, the Old Spice Guy commercials are amusing even if they get over the top. And the actor himself is relatable as a person. He seems like an honestly nice guy, check the interview.
This combination had caused the public to like Old Spice Guy on multiple levels. Those who are attracted to him because he is attractive, equestrians because he's on a horse, and geeks around the world for he is one of their own. Plus these commercials are more entertaining than the "use our product and random people will sleep with you instantly" tactic.
... I'm looking at you Axe (Smell Like a Chemical Bath) Body Spray.
