This elegant steed is another one of those wonderfully confusing models which appears to have been made by several different manufacturers over the years. It's possible that she was made by the Italian company OKF. A report from the 1978 Milan Fair in The Coin Slot talks of their new "fibreglass horse as found on a merry-go-round, beautifully decorated. It moved up and down when a child is riding. For sound there is a tiny "organ" which plays for each ride."
Elektro-Mobiltechnik, for certain, sold her under the name of "Music Horse", but I'm not sure if this version was released before or after 1978.
Tucktonia, Christchurch, 1986. If you listen carefully, you can hear the horse's original music playing in this video. Many thanks to Martin Bean!
She appears to have been based on a German or Dutch carousel horse and has some beautifully decorative moulding compared to most continental European coin operated rides of the time. She stood on a rather unusual flat base with the coin box hidden inside a gold "fairground organ".
Tucktonia, Christchurch, 1986. If you listen carefully, you can hear the horse's original music playing in this video. Many thanks to Martin Bean!
She appears to have been based on a German or Dutch carousel horse and has some beautifully decorative moulding compared to most continental European coin operated rides of the time. She stood on a rather unusual flat base with the coin box hidden inside a gold "fairground organ".
I was only lucky enough to see this beautiful horse once during my childhood and she was one of the only rides I never got to actually ride. My dad said the horse had to be manually rocked due to the strange base (apparently he didn't realise the motor was hidden within the horse!) and inserting a coin would just make music play, so he wasn't prepared to waste 20p on a ride that didn't move!
Ramsgate, August 1997
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