Toy horsey

OS

A Toy horsey is an item made as a joke by Jagex, poking fun at the requests made by players to have horses. It was released on 1 April as part of the 2004 April Fools joke. There are four colours:

•  Toy horsey (brown)
•  Toy horsey (white)
•  Toy horsey (grey)
•  Toy horsey (black)

Toy horseys are obtainable from Diango for 150 coins each, and come in four different colours: white, black, grey, and brown. Members can also buy toy horseys from Rasolo the merchant, near Baxtorian Falls. Members can also make one from a plank on any crafting table in their player-owned house. They need a Crafting level 10 or higher, and gain 15 experience points in doing so.

A player plays with his brown toy horsey.

When playing with the horsey, an animation appears showing the character playing with it. Text appears above the character's head, saying Just say neigh to gambling!

The text displayed when playing with the horsey used to be three horse related-phrases: Come on Dobbin, we can win the race!; Hi-ho Silver, and away!; or Neaahhhyyy! Giddy-up horsey! However, this was changed to its current form on 13 January 2012 in response to the item's use in gambling games. The same sentence always appears, preventing the use of the item in gambling.

Before it was modified, these items became popular for use in the "Horse Game", a gambling game that arose after the dice bag (and dicing) was banned and taken away from the game. Players would bet on which phrase would appear when the horsey was played with. While the payouts were larger (often 3 or 4 times cash offered for winning), the chances of winning decrease from 45% (a 55+ roll of the dice) to only 33% (1/3 chance of correct phrase) while playing the "Horse Game", but this is often made up for by increasing the payback above 2x. This method, along with other forms of currently existing gambling, was often used for scamming until the update mentioned above.

Trivia

• After they were first released, the text used to show up in the public box allowing people to spam the game chat by repeatedly playing with their toy horsey; this was fixed by Jagex on 13 January 2012.
• The description of the item reads "An inexpensive toy horsey." This is presumed to be a deterrent to popular item scamming occurring during the time of the item's release. It was not uncommon for players to advertise the toy being worth millions in attempts to scam other players. For the most part, this scam has been prevented due to the item values being displayed in the trade screen.
• One of the original phrases, "Hi-ho Silver, and away!" is a reference to a catch phrase from "The Lone Ranger" radio and tv program from the 1950s